


Prompt Fic

by brokenmemento



Series: Lengthy Prompt Fics [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe, Angst, Bodyguard, Coffee Shops, Cold War, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Fake Dating, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Modern AU, Post-Season/Series 01, Sharing a Bed, Tumblr Prompt, Undercover, Vampire Turning, homoerotic telepathy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:53:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24029176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Based on guidance and specifications from Tumblr asks, these ficlets are designed and created for your reading pleasure involving Tissaia de Vries and Yennefer of Vengerberg.Each are stand alone chapters and do not have to be read in order.
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Lengthy Prompt Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2012227
Comments: 163
Kudos: 342





	1. Queens of the Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [airotsa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airotsa/gifts), [Nigev](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nigev/gifts), [zooeyglasszorba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zooeyglasszorba/gifts), [BloodInTheFields](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodInTheFields/gifts).



> *Prompting is still open. Feel free to comment here if you would like one based on an idea that you want to see come to life through writing.
> 
> **Ratings will vary depending on the prompt and contain the dedication to the wonderful soul who came up with the concept. Each concept is supposed to be a short snippet and will generally fall between 1k-2k words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Chapter for airotsa
> 
> **Prompt: Queens of the Ashes

Every time a mage has a conduit moment, the chaos and science and art is a coin toss. While some land on their heads and become destined for the darkened waters in the Aretuzan pit, others manage to wobble along on their legs until they’re slinging spells and reminding the world why magic has its place. 

Tissaia usually knows very early on what side each girl will arrive on. It’s relatively easy to determine who will pass through life unaware of anything other than the primal instinct of survival through feeding and swimming while others get to fine-tune their aptitudes for royal courts. 

It’s why she does not take kindly to Vanielle’s touch on her arm after watching Yennefer leave the conclave meeting. It’s why she feels the woman’s words burn inside her. _You cannot rein that one in, Tissaia._ Tissaia backs her ears, sets her jaw. She quickly works to catch up with Yennefer’s disappearing form.

———-

She’s not sure how long she wanders around the scorched field, yelling beyond all the capability of her throat as it begins to rasp and stall out. A thin blue-gray sheen covers her dress, the dimeritium, but she sees other flecks of pale dust float down like snow and mix with the powder. 

Everything is burned or is burning. Her lungs hold breathtaking fire, heat emanates from the ground with every footstep she takes, her mind flames with wild, fatalistic ideas. 

She’s becoming hysterical with every crumpled body she walks past, faces twisted in non-discernible soot that steals their humanity from them and leaves but a blank corpse on the floor. She could be walking past her colleagues, her students, mages she’s known for decades and can’t even recognize because of the ravages of war. One of them could even be _her_. 

Tissaia loses her balance, tumbles to the ground and hits her knees. A wracking sob escapes her throat and she tries futilely to reach out to touch even the faintest tendril of magic from her. Everything is eerily quiet save for her own ragged breathing. 

Wherever Yennefer is is simply beyond Tissaia’s grasp.

—————

The thing about a bottle is that once it’s open, it’s very hard to close. Especially when the bottle rolls out of reach or becomes lost and no amount of searching can uncover its place. Tissaia looks out the window of her study at Aretuza and sucks in a chest full of air. The parchment in her hand hangs loosely, but she does not let go. 

The message is rather short and to the point. Yennefer’s general whereabouts are fairly well known considering the chaos she’s leaving in her wake. Tissaia never meant for the results to become this, for Yennefer to explode and continue without end. 

The dispatch tells Tissaia where she must go: The City of the Golden Towers. She’s never actually set foot in it, only heard the stories and seen sketches of the grandeur of the Nilfgaardian seat of power. It’s supposed to instill awe in any who visit it for the first time. And if Tissaia doesn’t hurry, Yennefer will burn it all to the ground. 

—————

The scope of it is even more astonishing than the stories of it. The obvious difference is the ash that rains down from the skies and the engulfing heat that can be felt on every street corner Tissaia turns down. 

She finds her in the keep of the town, surrounded by weapons and armor and shields bearing the Nilfgaardian sun insignia. Tissaia approaches cautiously, can now feel the static energy coming off her in waves. It almost staggers her, but she continues to make careful footfalls on the planks of the floor. 

“Yennefer,” she says softly so as not to spook and holds up a surrendering hand. 

She’s met with wild violet eyes that lack focus on anything. The woman’s sight has been robbed from her, yet she still sees so much. Her face contorts in confusion and fury as she sweeps her head back and forth, listening for Tissaia to make any sound other than shaky breathing. 

“Tissaia?”

“It’s time to come home, Yennefer,” Tissaia speaks slowly, inches forward with another step. “We can end this, right here, right now.”

A maniacal laugh bounces off the walls of the keep. Her black and bloodied hand grasps at her chest and abdomen as she works her way through the bitterness. 

“You have got to be joking,” Yennefer answers. Her face becomes more violent. “You saw what they did at Sodden, who they took from us! I watched Coral’s limbs get severed from her body, Vanielle pierced with arrows. Triss was brutally burned and Sabrina was overtaken by Fringilla’s dark warfare. I thought they had taken you from me too. Do not aim to tell me when this ends. Nilfgaard must pay. I have set their fleets afire. I will kill every last one of their soldiers and return every city to dirt. One day, I will crucify their masters. I will be the new Queen. This is my plan.”

She stalks toward Tissaia, brushes up against her body and waits for her to back away. Tissaia holds her ground. The air expelled from the huff of their noses tickle one another’s cheeks and chin as their chests each heave with unbridled emotion. While they’re standing on opposite ends, it still feels connected and beyond any severance. 

“You’re not afraid,” Yennefer judges, and correctly, because no, Tissaia is not afraid of _her_. Just of what she will do. 

“No,” Tissaia replies and dares to reach a hand up to push back a matted strand of black hair from Yennefer’s face, to bring her fingertips to trace over the lids of her unseeing eyes. 

Yennefer folds into her like a flower. Not a dying one, but one that’s needing a little bit of rain. Tissaia knows it’s what she needs to wash away the grit of what she’s done, what she’s been through. She holds her head and presses her lips to the top, wraps her arms even tighter so that Yennefer may never fall apart. Yennefer shuffles in her arms, pulls away, and begins to work at tracing the lines of Tissaia’s face. 

She shudders and her heart flutters as Yennefer shakes her head and moves her hand further down, her neck and ribs and abdomen a path. Her audacious hand skims back up across Tissaia’s breasts to rest on her heart. Yennefer’s face goes slack and then becomes resolute. 

“You will stay here with me,” Yennefer says calmly, the antithesis of what surrounds them on all sides. Her fingers curl against Tissaia’s chest, raking as if to gain purchase. To grab hold and never let go. “And I shall make you my Queen as well. We will be side by side, always. You can quell my chaos, make it only flicker. You told me to forget the bottle, but you are my cork.”

She clenches below Yennefer’s fingers, her heart in a vice grip because of the woman’s words. To think that even though her eyes lack vision, she can see a world where the two of them are together forever. It would be a good version of life if absolutely everything else were not wrong. 

“And what would we be Queens of, my precious girl? The ashes?” Tissaia dares to rebuttal, chances a hand in Yennefer’s own. “When you’ve taken everything, what is left?”

Yennefer glowers at the words, her face hatching much the same expression it used to hold when she would not get the ultimate reaction from her magic that she desired. It’s both yesterday and a lifetime ago, but Tissaia can still remember every word they’ve spoken to one another. Maybe because, for many years, there were none passed between them. 

“I think that I shall never have victory over you,” Yennefer sighs, defeated. “Your heart is incapable of it where I am concerned.”

Tissaia’s heart, in fact, is capable of much. It’s this that Yennefer has always failed to see. Because to her, Tissaia is a conquest, a step on a ladder she’s always been trying to climb. Rarely has she slowed her footfall from the sprint ahead, tried to sync them up to flow better with one another. 

She grabs Yennefer’s face somewhat roughly and makes her unseeing eyes hold hers to speak her words. “I told you before that survival must often come at the hands of compromise. Let us stray from a life of fire and flame. But on another path, I promise to hold your hand for all eternity.”

It’s the best she’s got and yet it’s pretty much the lot. While she’s just given herself up to the potentiality of Yennefer, it feels more like a destined resolution than a shackling necessity. She was never going to end up with just herself anyway. 

Yennefer’s head leans against the slope of Tissaia’s shoulder and her arms wind around her waist like vine. “Let’s go home,” the woman whispers, and Tissaia rocks her gently in their embrace. 

Above them, the city flakes like snow, and sound disappears. In the middle of the streets that are the treasure of Nilfgaard, their hearts try to find some sort of peace amongst the ruins. 


	2. Some Things Cannot Be Taught

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the battle of Sodden, Yennefer becomes an instructor at Aretuza.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Prompt: AU where Yennefer returns to Aretuza after Sodden as an instructor with Tissaia. They’re the only ones who aren’t aware that they are a couple.
> 
> **Chapter for jayj8896 on Tumblr

Love declarations are ostentatious and usually demoralizing displays of stupidity, a frivolity that Yennefer has decidedly avoided in her seventy-five years. It’s easier when emotion is redacted and what’s left is pure energy and lust. 

Yet she’s wound up doing one anyway, albeit inadvertently. At least that’s what the whispers that make their way back to her ears are saying: _She burned everything outside of the keep except the Rectoress._

There are even more that she keeps choosing without actually thinking of what they could mean, smaller ones with every passing day. 

The watchful eyes are accusatory of her as she passes by both familiar faces and not so recognizable ones within the walls of Aretuza. Like they’re all in on some secret that Yennefer hasn’t yet divined the answer to. 

Because really, Yennefer should literally be anywhere else but here. While Sodden will always have a stillness to it when it’s mentioned in a room, Yennefer’s presence here after the battle always seemed rather perfunctory and not at all in a plan of any kind. Except, perhaps, for Tissaia’s.

It’s as if because she’d been spared the flames on that hill, Tissaia is bent on paying Yennefer back for every breath she takes into her lungs. And Yennefer supposes that her teaching position has caused Tissaia an ample amount of grief and worry because even though Yennefer has little intention of walking out the door, Tissaia sees fit to always have a watchful eye on her movements. 

She shows up to classes and stands at the back of the room in silence, her blue eyes never once leaving Yennefer’s own. She sits beside Yennefer at the dining table and steals glances sideways when she can, sometimes even placing a gentle hand on Yennefer’s knee under the table. It’s her vehemence about how Aretuza is where Yennefer belongs and how she occasionally shows up late at Yennfer’s chambers to help her chase away darkened dreams that make Yennefer’s feet not long for flight every second of every day.

Perhaps it is these things that make others whisper conspiratorially when she passes or offer a knowing smile whenever the Rectoress and she are in the same room. But it’s not like that and never has been, even after Sodden had felt like a tipping point somehow.

The effort becomes exhausting with Triss, with Sabrina, with even some of the elder members of the Brotherhood. Like her presence without Tissaia on her hip is somewhat vexing. There has to be a limit to the ways she can say something in a similar vein: _we are not together._ Punctuation. The end. 

But one night, that battle of saying no again and again becomes its toughest yet. She’s rubbing her hands at her tired eyes, massaging her temples as she flicks distractedly at a page in a grimoire. She’s so tired that she doesn’t hear her enter, doesn’t even pick up on her presence until the paper flutters against her face and jolts her out of her reverie as it falls to the desktop.

Tissaia looks amused but equally as exhausted. She takes a seat across from Yennefer, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. She worries a lip between her teeth and Yennefer doesn’t want to look down at what Tissaia’s brought with her before searching the woman’s face for an answer. 

“What’s going on?”

She watches as Tissaia leans back suddenly and sighs. She points to the paper on the desk, encouraging Yennefer to read. 

“There’s talk,” she says, the bare bones of wherever this is going. 

“People talk, Tissaia. The walls of this place practically hum with the gossip of secrets and repression.”

“But usually not about us. At least not like this,” Tissaia counters and Yennefer must concede. 

“No.”

“They act as if we have something to hide, like we are keeping them all away from a truth that isn’t anything beyond their conjecture and hearsay.” Her eyes grow serious and her brow creases. “Do we have something to tell them, Yennefer?”

The answer is much the same as the last words she spoke and Yennefer wonders why Tissaia is barking up her tree when she has done nothing overtly to fuel these rumors. But then she stops, pauses to take stock of her actions because of the woman in front of her, all without thinking about it too much to avoid feeling everything. 

Yennefer leans back in her own chair, brings her legs up on the desk, and shrugs. She’s not exactly feeling unabashed, but she’s not relishing in the feel of lying or creating subterfuge either. There is a pinprick point of contention that eats at her every day and almost every night. One she cannot shake for the life of her. 

“I thought there was something, at Sodden,” Yennefer finally says. She’s really not trying to pick at a wound, but Tissaia’s eyes darken and her face goes stormy. Yennefer offers a challenge. “But tell me I’m wrong and then forget the lot of them.” She finishes with a dismissive wave of her hand. 

She’s met with stony silence. Yennefer leans forward and narrows her eyes. The beat of Tissaia’s heart betrays her cool exterior. Yennefer decides to press her thumb against it. 

“We cannot dismiss what others say if we don’t even know about the thing ourselves,” Yennefer tries to reason. “There’s a simple way to determine this.”

“And how is that?” Tissaia finally wonders. 

“We share a kiss.”

Tissaia’s teeth grind in her jaw and her nostrils flare. “Absolutely not. I will not indulge this flight of fancy simply because a bunch of mages decided to become rather loose-lipped in regards to my private life.”

Yennefer stands and rounds the desk, coming to position herself in front of Tissaia. She leans back against it and crosses both her arms and feet at the ankles. “What harm comes of it? Either way, we’re left with an explanation for a side. At best, we feel something between us. At worst, we waste a mere moment or two on an irritant never to be spoken of again.

“People wonder why I’m here, Tissaia. And if I’m being honest, I’ve often wondered myself. Can we not put this to bed, one way or the other?” Yennefer’s word choice is not lost on herself. She huffs a little at the thought.

Tissaia looks dubious but rises from her chair astonishingly quickly. Yennefer looks down at her and tries hard to control the rhythmic beat of her own body starting to spike in its pace. She takes a step forward, experimentally presses their bodies together a fraction of a touch. A hand finds Tissaia’s hip, the other softly at her elbow.

“This is making me uncomfortable,” Tissaia’s voice cracks as she looks down and worries herself with smoothing invisible wrinkles. Yet to touch Yennefer at all. 

Yennefer sighs and goes to turn away, not one to capitalize on such feelings solely for her own gain. A hand on her arm stops her from spinning though, and she glances at Tissaia’s fingers curled around her bicep. 

“Let’s to it then,” Tissaia grounds out nervously and Yennefer fails to gain discipline over her rabbit heart. 

She decides to let Tissaia guide them, the movement of their bodies, and the meeting of their lips. It’s soft, a whisper touch, but still leaves Yennefer’s lip glistening from being against the other woman’s. 

Tissaia’s hands rest on Yennefer’s arms, and Yennefer only pulls away a bit to gauge Tissaia’s reaction, one that left her own eyes closed for hanging seconds after its occurrence. “You felt nothing then,” she declares quietly. The hare in her heart turns to stone and develops a crack. 

“I felt everything,” the woman says in a gasping astonishment that lifts Yennefer’s pulse to the sky. 

“Why must we always be so stubborn to see the grandest of things between you and me the absolute last?” Yennefer tosses out a relieved and thankful laugh. 

“Because we do not know any other way,” Tissaia responds with her own controlled smile. 

But it leaves as she rubs a thumb over Yennefer’s bottom lip and then she’s rising on her tiptoes to press against Yennefer’s mouth once more. The candle flickers cradle their bodies in darkness and light, the key to them each unlocking a door to a world where they are a singular form. Now illuminated, it’s showing the thing that everyone had always thought they’d seen through the windows in both of their chests. 


	3. Testing the Extract

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alchemy time, traipsing through a swamp, someone gets hurt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Chapter for nigev
> 
> **Prompt: "...the moment when they realize they have feelings for each other? If it's in the midst of a dramatic battle all the better??? Maybe with injured Tissaia."
> 
> Hope I have delivered. For everyone else, if you've played the games, I put some Easter eggs in here that reference that.

Yennefer finds her in the greenhouse, the bun in her hair a little unkempt and her clothes less than crisp. Various bottles, vials, powders, herbs, and flowers lay in contrast to Tissaia’s appearance, each in precise rows. A mortar and pestle are in each of Tissaia’s hands and she works the object back and forth meticulously. 

She’s so consumed with her actions that she doesn’t even lift her head when Yennefer is standing right in front of her. 

“Um, hello?” Yennefer tries to switch her focus. 

“Oh, Yennefer. So good to see you.”

“Why are you acting like my presence is anything other than requested?” Yennefer holds up the scroll with a frown on her face. “Or have you forgotten you summoned me in your manic fury?”

“No. Your standing here is for good reason. I’ve been working on something that I require your aid on. Something potentially dangerous,” Tissaia says and holds up a round bauble with a luminescent substance within it between her thumb and forefinger. She smiles widely and Yennefer becomes suspicious. 

“What am I looking at?” Yennefer asks, confused. 

“I call it De Vries extract.”

“My, my. How humble of you,” Yennefer says sarcastically with an eye roll. “What’s its purpose and moreover, how does it involve me? I left a perfectly good game of strip Gwent to be here and…”

“I need to test the extract for success. It’s meant to imbue the user with enhanced vision. The Temerian swamps have proven rather fitful lately for travelers and settlers near the area. They’ve requested help with the creatures within it.”

“If it’s creatures that go bump in the night. I believe there is a soul that seeks out that type of adventure, not you and I,” Yennefer dismisses and heads for the door. She’s fine with indulging Tissaia in most things but fighting swamp monsters doesn’t seem like a good way to spend the evening. 

“Geralt was not asked for aid, I was. And I need you.” 

She hates that Tissaia’s so good at this, bending her to her will with a few well-placed words that always manage to lodge themselves deep like arrows. There’s hardly any ripping them out, always remnants left sticking. 

Yennefer turns and scowls at her. Tissaia picks up another vial, tossing it to where Yennefer stands. She catches it smoothly in her right hand, eyebrow raised. Tissaia sticks another in the pocket at her breast on the vest she wears. 

“Good. I’d bring a fairly large weapon as well. What we are hunting will take a little more than just magic and potions,” Tissaia actually grins. 

Yennefer tries to let her mood permeate but all she manages is an anxious feeling in her gut. 

—————-

“Alright, this should suffice,” Tissaia points out as they come to a stop by the murky water’s edge. 

Yennefer looks around at the nothingness, save for the moss-covered trees and the thick shoots of grass sticking up everywhere. Looking down, what doesn’t cover her boots with thick mud is submerged in black as pitch liquid. Idly, Yennefer wonders if the lily pads ever held greenness to them or were always their shriveled and gray selves. 

“What, exactly, is _this_?” Yennefer motions. “We’ve been walking forever and have seen fuck all.”

“Haven’t you learned yet that there is more than what’s just on the surface? That if we pull back the veil, we might also be surprised to learn what lurks behind it,” Tissaia chides and reaches into her pocket for the bauble. 

She nods to Yennefer as she removes her cork and waits. Pulling it from the glass, Yennefer leans in and sniffs, then jerks away. Her eyes twitch from the smell. 

“What in the gods names did you put in this?”

“I went through a bit of trial and error before I found the correct ingredients. A bit of rebis, some aether, and hydragenum, as well as two measures of quebrith to provide the base,” Tissaia explains. 

“You wasted a perfectly top-notch spirit for the sake of playing alchemist?”

“Wasted, no. You will see its purpose once it’s consumed. Now, drink.”

They each turn up their vials and really, Yennefer is quite stupid to be putting full faith in a woman who has been known to use doublespeak and be as evasive as these supposed creatures in this swamp. Having no idea what to expect, she sucks in a breath as her vision goes static and then begins to pulse. It’s effect is weird and Yennefer stumbles toward a tree to steady herself but then pulls back when she sees the outline of _something_ inside of it. 

All around, the silhouettes of things pop into view. Hidden behind logs or algae or even the water itself, Yennefer can make out certain creatures wherever she looks. She manages a shaky comment. “You really need to get a different hobby if this is what you do in your spare time.”

“I very well can’t spend my moments bare and with a deck of cards in my hand, can I?” Tissaia bites back, a jab at Yennefer’s intentions for the night. 

“Might do you some good,” Yennefer volleys only to lose the rest of the retort in her throat. 

In front of her, emerging from the water are giant sets of claws with barbs protruding from each. The carapace body is a dark contrast to the beady eyes that line its head. Yennefer watches as it comes to its full height and she slowly backs away, barely creating a ripple in the water with her feet as she brushes up against Tissaia’s shoulder. 

“When were you going to tell me there was a Kikimore involved?” Yennefer rasps coarsely. 

“Yennefer, Kikimore. Kikimore, Yennefer,” Tissaia introduces with a glib tone. 

She barely gets the words out before a deafening screech consumes the swamp and the thing lunges with its giant pinchers. Yennefer shoves Tissaia away as the swipe misses them by inches. Pulling her sword from the scabbard at her hip, she mutters a defensive spell and watches it’s jerking movements to plan her strike. 

When it comes at her again, she manages a slicing rake across the hardened underbelly, slightly more than a scratch, but blood does start to form where her blade struck and the thing shrieks in the air. While it’s preoccupied with Yennefer, Tissaia has managed to sneak to its flank and bury her long dagger in a joint between its legs. 

It whirls away from the blow, and Tissaia works to dodge the attack. However, she’s a moment too slow and the long spikes from its claws drag across her turning body, creating bloody marks down her back. 

Her potion works fine and Yennefer has seen enough to be over this whole quest. In her inquiry to make sure her brew worked, Tissaia has now foolishly put her body and life on the line which seems like a lopsided payoff. Yennefer conjures a large fireball and flings the heated flames at the creature. Slamming into its head, it shakes violently and scampers a few feet before submerging in deeper waters.

Only the sound of the crickets and Yennefer’s heavy breathing fill the swamp. The effects of Tissaia’s potion are starting to wear off so she uses the last of its gifts to make her way to Tissaia’s hunched over form on the bank. By the time she arrives, her vision is back to normal. 

“It got away. Hope your Temerian contacts don’t revolt against you,” Yennefer pants, trying to get her breath under control. “Also, your portion works, but you’ve managed to get injured. I thought the point was to avoid that.”

“It’s nothing,” Tissaia dismisses but Yennefer can hear the strain in her voice. 

Gasping, Yennefer takes a look at the angry lines peeking through the ripped vest and blouse. She falls onto her knees in the mud and hovers a hand over the wound.

Yennefer gives her a rueful look before moving around to her side. “Undo your buttons and take off the vest.”

Tissaia whirls around with a distressing furrow of her brows and Yennefer lets out a tired sigh. 

“Easy,” she points to Tissaia, “or hard.” She swings a finger back to herself. 

Tissaia grumbles but does as she’s told. She lets out a hiss as Yennefer works to gently lift the frayed cloth that’s sticking to her wound. Her own stomach does a bit of a somersault. Reaching into her pack, she withdraws a healing ointment and a linen bandage, dabbing the mixture on her skin. 

Tissaia sucks in a breath with a barely-there whimper yet says nothing still, even amid her obvious pain. Yennefer watches goose flesh prickle along her body with each touch of her fingers. She tries to not think anything of it as she unrolls the material and begins to cover the injury. 

“Thank you for saving me.”

It’s said so quietly that Yennefer almost thinks she imagines it. But then Tissaia glances at her from the corner of her eyes and her lips thin out. 

_There is give and take._

The woman’s words echo in Yennefer’s head and she knows one need not exist without the other. She finds herself wanting to take what’s been offered but also to send something back. 

“I’d always save you,” Yennefer admits. Because she has, during the war, and she will over and over again if need be. 

“At one point, you wouldn’t have.”

“Things change, Tissaia. People do.” Yennefer finishes with the bandage but instead of helping Tissaia complete lifting her tattered clothing to cover up again, she stops midway and places a kiss to her cheek. 

Tissaia’s skin is cool underneath Yennefer’s mouth and she sends out a small puff of air to the curve of her face as she backs away, shocked by her own behavior. She hadn’t planned to do that. Tissaia’s look is hard to read as her blue eyes look at Yennefer. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. I don’t know what came over me,” Yennefer tries to apologize as she goes back to helping cover Tissaia’s top half. 

The woman brings the collar closer to her neck but doesn’t begin to minimize the slit created from the buttons being undone. Yennefer realizes that she is waiting for the action though, openly staring at the swell of her chest. When it doesn’t happen, she swallows and looks away. A hand reaches out to touch her. 

“Don’t apologize, Yennefer. I quite liked it,” Tissaia admits, a sense of serenity lining her words. 

“Don’t tempt me. It might make a bolder woman out of me that presses for more,” Yennefer warns seriously. 

She watches Tissaia rise and finally begin to put herself together. Once she’s fixed her clothing and raked off some of the caked mud, she grabs her dagger from the ground and slings her own pack across her shoulder. Again, her eyes search for a hold against Yennefer’s.

“I might like that as well,” she adds and begins to walk the path out of the swamp. 

A smile flickers in Yennefer’s lips as she brings down her boots quickly to catch up with Tissaia’s retreating form. 


	4. While You Were Sleeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lack of focus, nighttime wandering, a lot of feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *For the incomparable Nigev, soul of a hundred beautiful prompts  
> **Prompt: Yennefer walking in on tissaia asleep at her desk  
> ***I figured why not go ahead and upload these prompts daily since I have many of them completed. The shorter length allows me to work at a quicker pace. Hopefully, you all don't get tired of me. That being said, this one is probably true to its rating. There are more down the pike though where the rating will go up a bit.

The woman is a pillar. Granite. Stone. A monolith that rarely ever sees a fissure, fine lines hardly ever detectable. She does not let many come around, even fewer in. How lonely her life must be, how quiet. It’s this Yennefer thinks as she loses herself listening to the swish of Tissaia’s skirt as she walks around the room.

“Either pay attention, piglet or remove yourself from my classroom. I have no time for daydreams or idleness. Both of those behaviors will prove of little use in the future, should you ascend and reach a royal court. It could mean your life,” Tissaia steps in front of Yennefer, jerking her out of her reverie. 

Her blue eyes are hellfire and Yennefer can hear the snickers from the other girls around the room. While some of them are her friends, she knows that the collective whole of them are betting against her. She can’t lift rocks or search minds. Her magic doesn’t come when she’s disciplined, only when she’s spiraling out of control. 

Yennefer knows Tissaia knows this, but she never gives her anything to build her up. She might have saved her from a pigpen, but she’s incredibly good at piling verbal shit at Yennefer’s feet constantly. It’s a lot of muckraking to get through, so much so that Yennefer is quite sure the Rectoress considers her a catastrophic failure. 

But then she will  _ say _ something or  _ do _ something and Yennefer has to have her mind tell her heart it means absolutely nothing. Despite all this, Yennefer feels things shifting inside of her. And while being caught not paying attention is embarrassing to some degree, she can’t get past the sense of guilt it instills in her too. Because no matter what the back and forth is with this woman, Yennefer wants to make her proud. 

So instead of a rebuttal (as she would like) or a denial (which wouldn’t work), she sees it fit to offer deferment instead, letting her violet eyes meet her mentor’s and uttering the simple  _ okay _ out of her mouth. 

When the lesson ends, the other girls shuffle out with chatty energy as Yennefer watches them go. She and Tissaia are the only remaining ones in the classroom. She glances over to her, holds her look for an intense few seconds, and then takes the book of spells from her standing desk and exits the room. She can feel Tissaia’s eyes never leave her retreating form.

*************

The thing Yennefer has never told anyone is that she has trouble sleeping. That is unless she can find some herbs to help her visit the land of nod. Usually, she tosses and turns or takes to other ways of spending her time. Almost constantly, her gnarled spine aches and the beds in Aretuza do little to alleviate the pain. It’s this, paired with the events of the day, that have Yennefer opening the door to her room just a crack so she can peek out to see if anyone else has taken to the halls.

Like every other night, the passages are empty. Candles line the path, but Yennefer grabs the one from her own quarters to aid her in her wandering. 

Behind each door she passes is a sorceress in training, another girl like herself that desperately wants. They all do. While one may desperately wish for the former comforts of home or another may desperately wish to outsmart all the others to be the best or one might desperately want to make it through this so the end can be seen, they all harbor their innermost desires close to the vest.

Yennefer’s own wanting is more of a mixture of things, an alchemical concoction of several different emotions. There’s the want to be better, the want to prove her value, the want to show a very difficult woman that she’s worth attention and trust and pride. 

Instead, she’s only given a subpar performance at best. The rock had levitated weeks after the initial lesson, listening to other’s minds proving much too difficult because her own won’t settle down long enough to let others speak. It’s why she had lost herself during the lesson today, why she can’t sit still inside her own brain. 

The compulsion to not only do well but do wonderfully is strong and Yennefer knows that if Tissaia thinks of her as a lost cause, she may as well throw in the towel. There’s no going back, no stopping-only continuing forward. And if she’s to do that, she needs to give the Rectoress an apology. 

While inside herself again, Yennefer has managed to arrive right outside of Tissaia’s adjoining chambers and study. She can feel the force of the woman’s magic from outside the door, knows she’s probably asleep. But then she notices the illumination from underneath and stops. A part of her knows she needs to leave, go back to her chambers and try for slumber once more. The door is slightly ajar though, so Yennefer softly puts a hand against it and quietly steps in. 

She sees Tissaia’s hunched over form at her desk. With care, Yennefer eases deeper into the room, mindful of her steps and trying not to make noise. It was clear upon her entering that Tissaia was asleep. And really, Yennefer should turn around and leave her like this, all the worse for wear. But she knows about pain, carries it quite literally every day. This posture will impact her stance tomorrow.

The woman now inches from her deserves what she gets. When she’s not lying prostrate, she’s intimidating in her complete lack of flappability. Yet as Yennefer stares down at her, her insides scrunch and make her feel the exact opposite. 

Like this, she’s pliable, human. While she may well have centuries under her belt, she looks smooth skinned and still a bit youthful. The only marker of the years rests between her eyes, no doubt an indicator of the way she holds them severely sometimes. 

Her breath comes out in faint expulsions, an occasional deeper sound working its way from her nose. Yennefer lets a crooked grin onto her face each time it happens. It’s because of this, her heart swells a little. 

Reaching down with a hesitant and shaking finger, midway through the motion it gains its courage and tucks a wayward hair behind Tissaia’s ear. Yennefer outlines the contours of the woman’s face like a blind woman without sight. To take it into her, to have a piece of Tissaia that no one else has. Yennefer is certain no other girl could boast to this, to seeing Tissaia in a moment of unawares. To understand how heartbreakingly enchanting she is when nothing is blocking the view of her. 

It’s this unimpeded moment that Yennefer knows will live in her forever. There is no telling what the morrow will bring, another set of trials and tribulations to take her out at the knees (no doubt), but tonight, she lets herself have this. This quietly developing memory that must be tucked down and over and in the dark once it’s through. 

Because the two of them aren’t made of softness. It’s rough edges and jagged curves and the jerking back and forth that Yennefer is quite sure would drive anyone else mad yet amps up the thickness of raged determination that coats her insides like ether. 

Yennefer is what Tissaia has created in a sense. Volatile, smart, something that looks innocuous on the outside but could scorch you up before you know it. My, how the woman must be teeming with pleasure every time Yennefer pushes back.

Staring at her delicate face, Yennefer has a second but to revel in a completely different concept of the soul before her. One where there might be touch, confounding and desperately taken. Where there might be a smoothness instead of a jutting. One where she can actually not wallow in guilt for actually having the audacity to feel. 

In another life, this woman could even be loved. Yennefer knows this, the sensation of it warming in her belly. It’s the uncategorical kind though, the one without definition. The one that just is. 

She knows some of the other girls see Tissaia as their mother, the maternal figure that most of their lives were lacking. Yennefer has never felt this facet though, the tendrils of their connection not fitting that peg hole. She would do many things for this woman, she startlingly realizes.  _ To _ her as well. 

The thought, when it strikes, staggers Yennefer a little. It’s dark and awkward, a repression that’s only been appropriate to pull out and indulge in within her chambers a few times. Looking down at her sleeping body, it’s hard not to imagine what it would feel like, if it’s ever touched and basked in by others, a thing of glory as it should be. 

Yennefer doubts that highly, finds the thought a little sad. Without Aretuza, without her post, Tissaia is left to the comfort of cursory relationships, nothing past mere acquaintances and her own hand between her thighs to stave off the loneliness she must feel.

This loneliness-Yennefer knows a thing or two about it. How sometimes it’s so heavy, it’s stifling. How it makes a soul wander aimlessly. How without purpose, it can eat at one's bones. 

She’s never had the wherewithal to consider being someone’s person. But on this sleepless night, she thinks that both she and Tissaia could be that for one another if she can just manage to find a way in, to scale the walls that, as of now, are too high to climb with the curve of her spine and the twist of her jaw. But with help, with a new body, she could ascend to where Tissaia sits, be by her side and maybe even pass her. Oh, to become so powerful that she is an eclipse, able to cradle this woman in her arms forever. 

There’s a lot to overcome before they get there though. The prospect of it as of now is slim to none. The drive to arrive at that point is strong, however, and Yennefer is nothing if not determined. Stubbornly so. 

With a final skim of the shell of Tissaia’s ear, Yennefer pacts the moment tightly in her chest. The sunlight will bring back the woman Yennefer knows and bid this one back to night. 

“Goodnight, my Rectoress,” Yennefer whispers, dares to lay her lips with a ghost of a touch to the woman’s head. 

With a flick of her wrist, she dims the light of the candles and leaves Tissaia in the faintness of the room. 

*******

“Good morning, Yennefer,” her voice calls as Yennefer shuffles in hunched over and trying to hide. 

By this point in the line, Tissaia’s usually already at her podium. The absence of a greeting is what Yennefer gets every day. Today though, her blue eyes are still ice but she’s called her by her name. There’s no answering smile, only a palpable tension flickering between them both. 

Yennefer doesn’t cut it by walking away, amps it up by reaching out a hand to touch Tissaia’s small wrist. When it lands, her stomach jumps with abandon. 

“Good morning, Rectoress.” She smiles her best smile and joins the other girls in the circle around the room. 

A long way to go but slowly getting there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow's prompt: Coffee shop AU for zooeyglasszorba on Tumblr


	5. My Cup Runneth Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faith, hope, fear, and falling in love-coffee shop style

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Prompt: Coffee shop AU-yen is a rude barista and Tissaia like the verbal sparring  
> **For zooeyglasszorba on Tumblr  
> ***I'm not sure how this one turned out since a) I'm better at angst than fluff 2) I don't drink coffee 3) My frame of reference for this is a disjointed watch of 'Gypsy' on Netflix, lol. But hopefully, it's suitable!

Order and control are vital necessities in the life of Tissaia de Vries. Every second of her day is planned down to the minute during the week from 5 am to 9 pm. There’s a routine to be followed, one that she adheres to flawlessly. Until she doesn’t. 

When it happens, it’s like trying on a pair of jeans that don’t fit right or having a room full of her students staring at her with no answers to her questions following a lesson-it’s uncomfortable and frustrating and (eventually, she decides) exactly what her life was missing. 

But like any good thing, it takes a while to get there. 

She’s unaware of when it starts, so caught in the flow of her daily life, that the difference is imperceptible at first. The door to the shop clangs open and Tissaia pulls her scarf a little tighter around her. There’s a chill in the air and leaves scatter the ground as she enters, immediately hit with the comforting aroma of coffee grounds and brew filling her nose. 

She’s working to dig in her purse for her wallet while also checking the emails on her phone, so when she orders her usual drink, she doesn’t expect the response she gets. 

“Anything else, your majesty?” the voice asks, sarcasm dripping. 

Tissaia’s eyebrows knit together and finally, she looks up to be met with fierce violet eyes and a haughty look on the young woman’s face. 

“Excuse me?” Tissaia asks, glancing around to see if she’s gotten it all wrong, if maybe this sass isn’t directed toward someone else. 

“I don’t know. You just look like someone who thinks they’re terribly important,” the woman says wistfully and rests her chin in the palm of her hand as she leans over the counter. Not making any move to get Tissaia’s order either. 

Tissaia glances down. She’s chosen a simple skirt and heel combo. Her green blouse is unbuttoned enough to show a gold pendant hanging at her chest. The brown locks of her hair have been wound up onto her head and dainty gold studs adorn her ears. Her whole outfit is probably a combination of TJ Maxx and Ross Dress for Less, so it’s startling to get the appraisal of herself so completely off base. 

“I teach hormonal teenagers all day at the secondary school a few streets over. It has a way of bringing oneself down a peg,” Tissaia rebuttals. 

“I wasn’t aware sessions began this early,” the barista says with an eyebrow raise. “I mean, who walks through the door of a coffee shop at 6 am anyway?”

People who want caffeine and a hassle apparently. Tissaia looks around and it’s oddly empty. If she were to hazard a guess, it’s just her and this incredibly brash, if not lovely woman in the whole of the place. 

“Is there a problem?” Tissaia bites off a little too harshly. She’s not used to this deviation from the norm and it’s already putting her behind where she likes to be by this point in the day. 

“Other than the fact my boss gave me the opening shift for the hundredth time when I have expressed my desire to never wake up while it’s still dark outside, no.” She grabs a cup from the stack and looks at Tissaia sweetly. “Name?”

Tissaia frowns. “Is that really necessary? As you’ve already pointed out, no one else is here.” 

“Hmm, I’ll make one up for you then,” the woman smiles wolfishly and bites the marker between her teeth as she looks upward in faux deep thinking. “Karen? No, I don’t think that fits. You’re definitely repressed but not in the suburban mom kind of way. Samantha? That’s terribly basic too, but I feel myself getting warmer.”

As does Tissaia, for reasons solely relating to the exasperating person in front of her. “It’s Tissaia,” she cuts off the woman’s musings flatly. 

“Wow, kind of exotic and mysterious. Me likey,” the woman grins again.

Thankfully, she begins making the order. After a few minutes, she adds a sleeve and slides it over to Tissaia, who picks it up and examines the scribble on the side. It reads  _ Tessa _ . Tissaia looks up with a semi scathing look. 

“Not my name,” Tissaia holds the cup up and points. 

The woman shrugs. “Close enough. That will be $4.78.” 

As she pays, Tissaia finally gets a glimpse of the woman’s name tag: Yennefer. 

“Thanks,” Tissaia mumbles. She deposits a few crumpled bills in the tip jar for absolutely no reason at all other than custom. 

Yennefer smiles, all sugary saccharine. “No, thank you, love. Be sure to give me a raving review on Yelp. My boss eats that shit up. Also I don’t get a lot so, you know, it could help me not get fired.” She scrunches her nose at the last bit. 

Tissaia eyes her warily, feels the warmth of her drink creeping into her skin. Right, she needs to walk out. She needs to leave and never come back so that she can avoid any and all encounters with this Yennefer. But she doesn’t move. Yennefer places her hands on her hips, jutting them out a little, which causes Tissaia to swallow the growing lump forming in her throat.

“See you tomorrow?” The question is oddly hopeful in tone. 

Tissaia has absolutely no intention of returning, but she finds herself going through the door the very next morning with a flutter in her chest and the wind in her hair. It’s a blustery autumn morning and it’s enough to propel a body along. As she walks forward, she notices the drink already waiting for her, name a little closer to correct. 

This begins another routine of sorts that throws off the other ones in Tissaia’s life. She’s a weirder version of herself, one that lingers and smiles and actually makes conversation as if she has been deprived of it forever. And there’s Yennefer, the snarky and endearing, and perplexing barista whom Tissaia cannot get enough of at all. 

It’s this woman who creates bold things in her mouth like requests for telephone numbers and meetings outside of coffee shops. It’s this confounding person’s essence and existence that leads Tissaia to select her attire a bit more carefully or do her hair and makeup a different way. 

And really, Tissaia would like to examine her own head for an aneurysm or damage of some kind because she isn’t the type of woman to conform and perform, yet that’s exactly what she’s doing. She irrationally wants to impress Yennefer and somehow she becomes someone who lets her hands linger in hopes that she’ll get to brush against Yennefer’s fingers or that maybe Yennefer will decide the feel of her skin is nice and wants to get to know more of it. 

So really, it’s inevitable what happens. That even though she’s found her amongst the beans and creamer, that she takes her away from it one evening and admits the secrecy of the little world she’s built inside herself because of Yennefer. 

The night is dark, but instead of rising from slumber, the world is creeping into night. Tissaia makes the move first, so polar opposite of the modest way she’s always lived her life. Her hand is covering Yennefer’s and they’re looking out over the water which twinkles from the lights around the town. 

“My emotions for you are confusing and know I was never supposed to want anything from you other than my morning caffeinated beverage but…”

“You never get more of anything if you don’t ask for it,” Yennefer cuts her off in a throaty reply. 

“I’m trying here,” Tissaia says with exasperation lining her words. A smile curls at Yennefer’s lips and Tissaia knows she’s getting off on this a little because she’s, well, Yennefer. 

“So ask it.”

“I should like to kiss you and I know that’s not terribly appropriate and we’ve only known each other a short amount of time but in my bones, it feels like years and…”

And words are getting stuck in her mouth, never to leave, but the interruption this time is better than a string of conversation because Yennefer is kissing  _ her _ and all the parts of life seem to click into place. With Yennefer against her lips, there’s no age or social constraints against them because this is  _ right  _ and Tissaia has denied herself things that have felt this way for as long as she can remember. 

“How wonderful,” she maybe breathes when their lips have left one another. It’s the best kind of receiving. 

“You’re filing all the edges on me. I don’t know if I like it,” Yennefer tells her but there is no reprimand in her voice. It’s full of weight and Tissaia knows she will never be the same again. 

Suddenly, there are cozy mornings inside of warm arms, the aroma of java brewing in their own pot, of sipping the contents of the mug and not having to pull away from the growing presence of home in Yennefer’s eyes. It’s these flights of fancy that shake the foundation upon which she has built everything. 

“I want everything, edges and all,” Tissaia says seriously. Because she does. 

Their reflection must look beautiful on the water as they hold onto one another and Tissaia can’t understand the airiness in her chest or the smile on her face or the way everything just  _ works _ . Yennefer, the answer to a question Tissaia didn’t know her life was asking her about. Found one quiet morning, sitting in a shop and waiting to battle against Tissaia and the rest of the world. 

Somehow, it’s all very fitting. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow's offering: A Cold War/AU spy tale for @BloodInTheFields


	6. Of the Cold and War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Prompt: Cold War AU-with Tissaia and spy Yennefer  
> **From @BloodInTheFields  
> ***Rating for this chapter is a mild M
> 
> I'm not 100% sure this hit all the marks either, lol. But I tried! My aim was for a sexy action thriller in 2k words. Which is fairly hard given character background setup and story. Hopefully, the conclusion is satisfying. Also: a) I speak English and know enough Spanish to get me by so any weird translation mistakes for my non-English phrases can be blamed on Google. Thanks, internet. b) Tissaia looks like MyAnna Buring in this. I did what I did. UNDERCOVER, people.

They train her like a dog. The exercises are meant to break her, to strip her down to her bare bones. The flesh of her body blooms purple and her mind is slammed against until she feels it might actually begin to crack. This is the way the United States government treats you when you’re meant to assimilate into another life as if you’ve always lived it. 

Tissaia is no longer a part of America. The citizenry she’s held is peeled away from who she is, even her surname that she’s carried from the moment she entered the world. The color of her hair is bleached too, a shock of stark blonde and shining blue all she sees when she looks in the mirror. 

For all intents and purposes, she’s now a Soviet. 

Her passport says it, her credentials and ID’s all reflect it. She’s even got a very realistic birth certificate to show that she was born in Chelyabinsk a mere forty years ago. She’s been taught and tested and quizzed to the point that her grasp on the language is almost flawless. Any break in her speech or mispronunciations, any wrong inflections, have long been beaten out of her.

Being destroyed and created again should feel like a tailspin, yet Tissaia has never felt more free as she grabs at her now fair colored hair and runs her fingers along it. She must get used to this face because it’s the one she’s going to be living with indefinitely. 

Her destination is Poldosk, right outside of Moscow. Knowing that there’s no love lost between the two nations, the country will be unforgiving in a way that Tissaia knows will make her stronger. She’s to have a contact once she arrives, most likely someone working within the dark spy networks of the Russian political system. Trade secrets being leaked, classified information essentially being flung from the window and all by whom? 

Tissaia stares into the violet of her eyes, peruses her file one last time before she will not be able to look at it again. She’ll hand it to the woman-she’s smart. Hard to catch and sly as a fox, she disappears from sight before anyone can register they’ve even seen her. But Tissaia knows she’s different. As she runs a finger over the glossy photo, she knows that she will be the one to foil whatever plans this Yennefer Vengerberg has. 

—————-

True to form, the landscape of the Soviet Union proves unrelenting and beautiful. The ground is a glittering crisp whiteness and the sun does little to pacify the cold wind that works its way under Tissaia’s faux mink coat and hat. 

Her quarters are small but clean, the view almost as unforgiving as the weather. She sits on the squeaking bed and curls her fingers around the mattress, working to ground her thoughts with what must be accomplished. Her body is tired but she’s been pushed to the brink of collapse before. This is what she’s been trained for. 

She wakes sometime later with her face pressed to a pillow and hair in her eyes. It’s still weird to see it so different from the normal brown strands. Brushing them aside, she slowly sits up. 

A noise to the side has her diving for her gun in the bedside drawer, thumbing off the safety and pulling back the hammer quickly and efficiently. The whole action takes less than three seconds and leaves her chest heaving and nostrils flaring. The envelope under the door remains untouched and Tissaia makes her way to it with her weapon still at the ready. 

She’s not sure what she will do if it’s a bomb, but then again, most explosives don’t fit underneath doors and a gun won’t do much against one anyway. She weighs the thought of a chemical attack, some powdered substance lying in wait to incapacitate her, but decides against that as well. Puffing up air that ruffles her wild mane, she opens the manila envelope and brashly dumps its contents. 

Only nothing falls out. 

Tissaia frowns and pops open the envelope again, squints, and sees a small object stuck to the side. Reaching in, she grabs it and pulls it into the open. 

_ Razvlekatel'nyy Kompleks Podmoskov'ye _

The words mean nothing in and of themselves but she reads the card further and sees that it’s a bar near the Ice Palace and the Museum. The atmosphere looks elegant and mysterious enough to pique the interests of a certain Russia spy. 

The thing about people is that no matter how infallible they appear, they always have a vice. And if Yennefer Vengerberg’s file is correct, she likes the best of everything. 

———-

Tissaia stakes the place out for several weeks and tries to understand this Yennefer’s movements. It takes forever for her to even appear and when she does, she’s got Tissaia pressing the binoculars against her eyes a little too forcefully. 

Her youth is apparent as she exits a nondescript vehicle, skin flawless, and hair dark as pitch. She’s dressed like a fashion model instead of an internationally known espionage figure. Tissaia bites the inside of her cheek as she watches Vengerberg saunter into the building with about five lackeys fawning over her every step. 

After some time later, Tissaia decides watching Yennefer is no longer enough. It’s time to strike. She makes the plan to visit the club in the off chance that she will run into the girl since her visits are so erratic as to not have a pattern whatsoever. It’s as if she goes when and where she pleases, led purely by appetites for destruction. 

Getting ready in front of the mirror is so adverse to every time she’s done so in the last year. Her high cheekbones hold a blush of color and her lips are painted blood red. She’s left her hair messy but contained, giving her the vibe of excessive freedom. Her dress goes to the knee and is thicker because of the weather while tights cling to her legs. The neck of it hugs her own and she selects a tasteful pair of shoes to complete the outfit. 

When she enters the club, she scans quickly but doesn’t chance a long look around the interior. It’s dark anyway, so she’ll just have to survey the room once she’s more settled. In Russian, she orders a vodka rocks and takes a pull of it. It’s cool on her lips but burns in her throat. Goosebumps don’t lift on her skin though. She knows how to handle her liquor. 

Somewhere between the second and third one, she feels eyes on her. She thinks she sees someone out of the corner of her eye which is confirmed moments later as Yennefer sits down beside her, legs spread wide, and a sultry look on her face. She barks out to the bartender who immediately jumps at her call. 

Tissaia tries to ignore her completely. 

Which, of course, proves difficult since Yennefer is staring holes into her. When she speaks, her Russian is fast and lilting. 

_ I’ve never seen you around here and believe me, I’d know.  _

Tissaia finally turns and takes her eyes up and down her body. Yennefer practically preens in response. She drags the barstool closer and tries to whisper in Tissaia’s ear. 

“Можно купить тебе выпить,” she purrs and Tissaia shifts in her chair.

She wants to play hard to get, really, but she’s already knee-deep in Russian vodka and she knows if she says the word, Yennefer’s under her fingers and doing exactly what she says. Her eyes betray her, the lust evident with each look and word out of her mouth. 

“How about we take this party somewhere else?” Yennefer suggests with a disarming smile. 

The drink in Tissaia’s hand is replaced by Yennefer’s own and she’s being pulled into an elevator and up to a room. Yennefer barely gets the key in the door and wide enough for Tissaia to enter before she pounces. 

Her lips taste like expensive champagne and her perfume permeates Tissaia’s nose and skin. It’s everywhere, much like its owner. Control is getting harder to come by and Tissaia knows she’s got to get a hold of herself before she’s lost again. 

_ I barely know you _ , Tissaia tells her, coyishly backing away and putting some space between them. 

Yennefer raises an eyebrow and ambles forward, backing Tissaia into the wall to puff a hot breath along the skin of her neck. _ I can be whoever you want me to be _ , Yennefer smiles into her skin. 

“Fuck,” Tissaia mutters but in English. 

Yennefer backs away, a pleased look on her face. “So you speak English then?”

“I’ve learned,” Tissaia says simply. “So back to you being whoever I want.”

“Mmm, pretty little  _ kotyonok _ . You say the word and I’m someone else.”

“Italian.”

“Sei una bellissima stella,” Yennefer whispers hotly in her ear, applies pressure with her lips to Tissaia’s collarbone. 

“French.”

“Je veux te sentir,” she says and presses a roaming hand against the inside of Tissaia’s tight clad thigh. 

Her breath hitches and she looks at Yennefer square in her darkened and desire filled eyes. “Be an American.”

“You are definitely no good for me,” Yennefer says in her best valley girl accent. By now, her hand is well and good up Tissaia’s dress and she’s going in for the kill. 

Tissaia grabs a hank of her hair, yanks it back and exposes the bobbing of her throat. Yennefer’s hand jerks at Tissaia’s hip but stays mostly in place. 

“Tell me something that only a filthy American would know,” Tissaia commands in a harsh voice. 

Yennefer drops to her knees and looks up into Tissaia’s eyes. What she says knocks Tissaia for a loop. What she does crosses Tissaia over into the point of no return. 

She nuzzles Tissaia’s pubis, inhales deeply. Her hands disappear and pull down the tights, leaving Tissaia’s legs bare. When she rises, she kisses Tissaia fiercely and sneaks a hand to touch against her bare core. 

Mid-kiss, Yennefer stops and feels the hard press of the metal into her ribs. Tissaia glares at her and shoves her gun harder into her, but Yennefer only looks mildly disappointed. “Well, this is rude.”

“Yeah,” Tissaia agrees. 

Yennefer skims a delicate touch across Tissaia’s face before her brows knit together and she brings her head forward to crush into Tissaia’s. Blackness claims her vision for frantic seconds and she thinks she can make her outline out, so she fires off a shot rather blindly and hears a grunt.

When she gets her bearings back, her chest is heaving and a trickle of blood works its way out of her nose. Swiping across it with the back of her hand, she notices a few droplets of blood leading out of the room.

Tissaia touches the aching flesh on her face and sighs.

—————

A few days later, the phone in her quarters rings. The pregnant pause over the line tells her all she needs to know. 

“How did you get this number, Yennefer?”

“Mmm, I am able to get most things that I want,” she says simply, her voice too rich for its own good through the telephone wire. “Except there was that misstep the other day when you pulled a gun on me.”

“My apologies,” Tissaia says in mock sympathy. “I should have killed you.”

“Mmm, my shoulder says to remind you of your shot. It’s going to leave a scar and you can probably tell I don’t much like such a thing. Also, what would your American government think of you if you had killed me instead of, how do you say it? ‘Bring me to justice’, yeah?”

Tissaia’s blood runs cold. Yennefer starts to speak again. 

“I’ll admit, you had me going. Good cover, documents in order, story straight. But more importantly, woman, you had me on my knees. And let’s be honest. That takes a lot. Too bad we could not have been friends in another life. Maybe even lovers. I did love the way you felt, so wet against my fingers.”

Tissaia grips the plastic in her hands even tighter, wills her body not to react in the same way now even though she’s been made. Her next words come through clenched teeth. 

“So what happens next? I ‘mysteriously’ disappear in the mother country, full stop, end paragraph?”

A hum fills her ears on the other side of the line. “You know of me too. I do not see that being a positive for myself either,” Yennefer says with an air of indifference. 

“You take things from people, things that were never supposed to be given. It is my job to stop you,” Tissaia tries to level her voice to keep the anxiety from creeping. 

“I think that you will find that on the sides we fight for? No one is innocent. Not your American politicians, not my Communist compatriots.”

“But someone has got to come out on top. Something's got to give.”

“Ah, pretty little  _ kotyonok.  _ You try to see the world in color when there is only gray. And I should think with you and me, neither of us would ever truly top the other. Stay safe, Tissaia. This world is cruel and unforgiving. It will be difficult for me to not come for you someday.”

“To put a bullet in my skull?”

“Hmm, I do not think so. You are far too interesting and beautiful to kill. Please, do not come to my dreams too often.”

With that, the line goes dead. Tissaia, somehow, has an inexplicable smile on her lips. 


	7. Never and Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fighting, angst, and some chin tilting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chin tilting fic, rating T  
> For: Tumblr ate my messages so I forget who originally requested this. Sorry!

She sees her once after Rinde. Before the conclave meeting. Neither of them talks about it. They let Yennefer’s reappearance with Vilgefortz be her true return.

Something had felt off before Tissaia left the walls of Aretuza and teleported to Redania. There was a strange energy swirling around the conduit moment, almost like a warning:  _ do not make this trip.  _ Yet she had grabbed a cart and made her way to the small cottage, looked into the swirling chaos of the yellow-brown eyes, and felt her own instincts go akimbo. 

The girl, no doubt, had shown the gift but even as Tissaia had made arrangements for her to travel to Aretuza in a fortnight, a sense of foreboding had inched its way inside of her bones. This one was going to cause her grief, even more than any of her other girls. Including Yennefer. 

Just as she had made her way to return the horses, she’d been ambushed by a posse of bandits looking to capitalize on her small stature, her aloneness, and her well-tailored clothes. Of course, they had been disposed of. But one had managed to get a swift punch to her gut that made a rib snap and another a knife gash across her cheek. 

Once they lay dead in a heap around Tissaia’s spent body, she’d murmured the teleportation spell and fallen to her knees in her chambers. Gingerly working to peel herself out of her now dirty clothing, she’d sucked in a breath sharply and let out a whimpering growl as she skimmed a finger over her black and bluing flesh.

She’d managed to get a simple cotton underdress over her body when a portal whirled to life and Yennefer stepped through with rage in her violet eyes. Yennefer stalked over to her, took in her bent posture, and waited for Tissaia to speak. 

“Why are you here, Yennefer?”

“I was in the area,” Yennefer sniffed, trying to appear disinterested. Tissaia had cast up a skeptical eye to her, effectively calling her out on the lie, which led to the woman grounding out the truth. “I sensed you were in danger and I was right. Look at you.”

“I can very well handle myself without you playing bodyguard or knight in shining armor, thank you,” Tissaia scolded but bit off the rest of the words when she moved wrong and was reminded of her damaged insides. 

Squatting, Yennefer ducked to look under Tissaia’s chin and then reached up with her thumb and forefinger to turn Tissaia’s face. Angrily, Tissaia slapped it away and glared at Yennefer’s presumptuous behavior. The last time that had seen one another, Yennefer had rather offhandedly dismissed Tissaia from her chambers, haughty and downright cruel in their conversation. The memory of that was still too raw to ignore. 

“You tell me you’re done with me the last time we speak. Now you all but rush to my aid claiming you felt I was in danger. It seems very hypocritical if you ask me.” Her eyes had shown how unwelcome the visit was, the sheer will of her not wanting to have to deal with Yennefer. 

“Good thing no one is asking you then,” Yennefer said with a sneer and roughly put her fingers back on Tissaia’s chin to turn her head and once more pick up her examination of the rectoress. 

As if wanting to cause a little pain, Yennefer had traced the dragger gash from the top of Tissaia’s high cheekbone to the end of it near the corner of her mouth. Experimentally, Yennefer ran a thumbnail over the edge, touching Tissaia’s lip. When she pulled her hand away, there was a thin streak of blood. 

She had leveled her eyes, the rage evident behind them, and held up her finger for Tissaia to see the results. It had caused Tissaia’s breath to become disjointed, her heart to begin skipping beats. 

“Who did this to you?” Yennefer asked quietly. There was a tenseness to the words, the anger licking them as they tumbled from her tongue. 

“Bandits, nothing more. Looking for coin or a good time. Neither of which they received. Wholly inconsequential going forward into the future.”

“What were you doing in Redania alone anyway?”

“While normally none of your business, it pertained to the  _ role _ I fulfill at this institution. In order to teach mages, there must be some to fill the rooms. Surely you’ve not forgotten how it works, Yennefer,” Tissaia chastised. 

“And those mages need a  _ rectoress _ to guide them, otherwise, what is the point?” Yennefer stood and began to pace back and forth, the anger barely restrained within her. 

“Which matters not to you anymore, so go back to the place from whence you came. Go back to your quest for everything.”

Tissaia was bitter. She’d been hurt. Though her relationship with Yennefer had been built on shaky foundations, she’d eased up on her as time went on, as she found her magical gifts and became an astounding talent. Tissaia supposed she had been too late in pulling back because Yennefer had been feeding off of it, developing venom with each passing year. 

It’s why they had not spoken since Rinde. It’s why no words would be forthcoming either. 

Yennefer shook her head, settled in her pace, and looked Tissaia square in the eyes. “We have become more like enemies, you and I. Standing on opposite sides, wanting different things. Yet…” Yennefer leaned down, whispered the next thing out, deadly and serious. “I stand here wanting everything to  _ not _ be that way. I am here wanting to protect you from the world with no good reason why. You, rectoress, make me a weaker mage.”

“Is that why you go years then without so much as a word? Is it why you shun any and all of my attempts to regain some semblance of amicability between the two of us? Do I look protected?” Tissaia stood on her own two feet then, teeth gritted. 

Yennefer’s face went devoid of anything. Tissaia knew she had struck a nerve but by that point, it was too late. While Yennefer had let her anger fester for decades, Tissaia had her own kind of guilt and grief wrapped up in twine together. She’d had to lug it around, take it with her, brush it back with each new face she brought into the walls of Aretuza. 

No one was ever going to be like Yennefer. The girls would push her occasionally, yes, and she would feel what she was capable of toward them. But she would never go beyond that as she had with the woman standing before her. Her emotions for this one had defied her and she paid for it dearly every day. 

“Fine,” Yennefer said coolly. “Maybe another fifty years of space will do us some good. We can’t even be in the same room as one another without a battle.”

Tissaia had lost it. Her perfectly perfected veneer crumbled and she launched into a tirade. “You create the battles, Yennefer, not I. You accuse me of only wanting good for you if I have my hand in it. That what you want is beyond my scope. It is you that has no use for me, not the other way around. I’ve tried, all these years, to make contact or keep up with you but you’re beyond  _ my _ scope now.”

“You are no damsel in distress, Tissaia de Vries,” Yennefer shook her head. “Yet sometimes even the mightiest need saving. Until we meet again.”

She’d stepped through a portal then, leaving Tissaia with her bruised and broken ribs along with bruised and broken pride. It was a shoe she was accustomed to wearing. 

———-

“Who did this to you?” The words are said again, but she’s having trouble focusing and there are so many screams and shouting all around. She collapses, her knees the only part of her body that seems to be working as they should. 

This is what dying feels like, she knows. It has to be. This will be the field where she lays down and never gets up. At least she gets to close her eyes and feel Yennefer’s hand in her own. 

“Tissaia, who did this to you? Please.” Repeated. 

She tries to focus her swimming vision, works to calm the raging of the powder in her veins. “I’ve done it to myself, I suppose,” she admits. Always guilt. 

“No,” Yennefer shakes her head and tears create tracks in the soot on her face. “Don’t blame this on yourself.”

“She’s one of us, Yennefer. Do not go after her.” Her name need not be said. They both know who.

Yennefer stills. Tissaia sees that she’s poked a cornered beast, stroked an already going flame. The woman’s face is a storm and Tissaia knows if she could feel it, her chaos would be everywhere. 

_ Forget the bottle _ , Tissaia tells her. 

“I’m going to burn them all,” is the last thing Tissaia hears before Yennefer wrenches away from her and does exactly what she says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next installment's prompt: rivals-to-lovers + fake married + going undercover. “we can’t stand each other but we must act EXTREMELY and UNMISTAKABLY in LOVE for PROFESSIONAL purposes only


	8. Let This Youth Not Be Wasted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uncomfortable meetings in the teacher workroom, wedding dates, kissing under the stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "the sexiest trope combo is rivals-to-lovers + fake married + going undercover. “we can’t stand each other but we must act EXTREMELY and UNMISTAKABLY in LOVE for PROFESSIONAL purposes only”...... unparalleled"
> 
> Chapter Rating: T
> 
> For: zooeyglasszorba

“I think everyone is going, so you know, it would look a bit odd if you didn’t show up,” Vanielle explains over a cup of coffee.

They’re standing in the teacher's workroom, each of their conferences beginning as the bell trills out in the hall. Tissaia wishes she were literally anywhere else. Holding her own warm mug in her hands, she tries to give her best reassuring smile. 

“I’m sure Mr. Artorius won’t even have a chance to miss my not being there,” Tissaia tries to deflect. Her heart rate amps up when she watches Yennefer walk through the door. Have they always had the same conference time? Tissaia frowns. 

The woman pays neither of them any mind. She opens the fridge and gazes in curiously before apparently finding nothing of interest. She then opens a cabinet and withdraws a dusty mug, blowing it out and sending the particles everywhere. Tissaia would laugh if she weren’t so ridiculous. 

Yennefer frowns and then shrugs, going over to the coffee pot and fills her cup to the brim. A bit sloshes out on the counter and she rolls off entirely too many paper towels to clean it up. She’s like this, Ms. Vengerberg. A first-year teacher, her room is constant chaos and noise where Tissaia finds herself exercising control and structure as a veteran teacher. She’s honestly shocked none of her courses have managed to burn the school down. Wild and willful young lady…

“I just think it would be good for you to get out a bit. Make an appearance at least. And if you’re worried about the plus one…” Vanielle trails off and Tissaia stills. 

She’s not dating. She’s not going to find a date just for the sake of looking less pathetically alone at a wedding. There’s keeping social appearances and then there’s madness. She will not be guilted into whatever Vanielle is trying to get at. 

“It’s not about the plus one, really,” Tissaia tries. 

“I could understand feeling a little bit of...discomfort at attending alone. Especially at our ages when most people are already paired off.”

_ At forty _ , is what Vanielle means. Most people at forty have made a decision about their futures, have latched their trailer on to someone else’s. Tissaia spent most of her young adult life getting her undergrad and then masters, so there was little room in the flux of it for tradition. If Vanielle is meaning to poke, it’s working. 

“Actually, she’d invited me as her plus one,” the voice behind them says and both women spin around to remember Yennefer has been in the room almost the whole time. 

Tissaia swallows what feels like the thickness of her own tongue. She’s never interacted much with Yennefer, only exchanging morning greetings at the most. There’s a good bit of age difference too, with her being fresh out of college and her teacher examinations, so the chasm between the two of them, both personally and professionally, seems large. 

To say Vanielle’s face holds shock is an understatement. A dubious look crosses her face and she turns back to Tissaia. “Seriously? Tissaia…”

Tissaia backs her shoulders, feels something white-hot flare in her, anger that she usually tries to tamp down. She shoots a look over to Yennefer’s smug face and braces against the flip-flop of her stomach. 

“Yes,” Tissaia’s mouth has the audacity to let out. She’s going to be sick. 

“See you at 6 tomorrow, darling,” Yennefer shoves away from the edge of the counter and lets her long fingers brush against Tissaia’s arm. 

Both women watch as she exits the door and goes back into the hallways of the school. 

——————

There’s a phone tree the entire campus has, so when Tissaia hurriedly left after school in an effort to avoid Yennefer, she’d not thought about giving the woman her number or how she’d meet her before the evening festivities. When her phone pings early Saturday morning, it seems the woman has managed just fine. 

_ Good morning, wedding date. Can’t wait to see you all dressed up. Xxx _

Tissaia almost throws the phone but types out a quick  _ it’s not a date  _ before shoving it out of sight and out of mind. Sort of. 

The night before, she had laid out her dress and shoes for the evening. Earrings and a bracelet were close by on the nightstand and makeup carefully selected to round out the look. It had all seemed like a good plan last night. Looking at it in the morning light, she feels foolish. 

As the day progresses, that feeling grows. She paces, can’t sit still, makes a grand effort to not look at her phone or secretly wish Yennefer has sent more texts. After lunch, she breaks down and chances a look at her screen. Yennefer has sent a picture of herself standing in only her bra and a skirt, hair held up by her hand atop her head.  _ Up or down?  _ the message reads. 

Tissaia death grips her phone, tries not to look at the flesh of Yennefer’s stomach, the gentle slopes of breasts that disappear underneath the lacy fabric of her black bra. 

_ -It doesn’t matter! And that question did not require the lack of a shirt!  _

_ -Preview of the after party. ❤️ _

Tissaia is not doing this with this woman. She doesn’t know her at all. In fact, she’s fairly sure Yennefer knows that she abhors the way she runs her classroom as she’s said it before. The woman is brash and creative and beautiful and  _ no _ , she refuses to do this. She holds the button down and turns it completely off. 

By five, she’s ready and back to pacing. Anxiety isn’t something she indulges in very often but it wracks her body, makes it electric. When six mercifully comes, a knock on the door sounds and Tissaia answers it already slightly out of breath. 

What stands on the other side is a complete vision. Tissaia loses any air she has left. 

—————-

When they walk into the twinkling lights of the garden, Tissaia knows that every single eye is on the pair of them. Yennefer’s curled hair falls in brown waves at her shoulders and the dress she’s chosen is tight on every curve of her jaw dropping body. 

Tissaia feels like a mouse at the side of a lioness, but she tries to project a confidence she doesn’t feel. This becomes even more difficult when Yennefer wraps an arm around Tissaia’s slender waist and takes a champagne flute off a passing tray, putting it into Tissaia’s hand.

“You need to loosen up,” Yennefer whispers in her ear. Tissaia can smell the intoxicating scent of her perfume. 

“Don’t presume to tell me what I need,” Tissaia growls back, irritated with the reproach. 

It’s been over a decade since she was in her twenties, even longer since she has felt the youth of life. Waltzing in on the arm of a baby isn’t going to magically recapture her yesteryears, no matter how hard she tries. 

“You know what the students say about you?” Yennefer whispers and looks across the expanse of the party, smiling widely at several passersby who stare at the unlikely pair and scamper on.

“I don’t think I care to know,” Tissaia whispers coarsely, tries to not let the heat of Yennefer’s arm make warmth pool elsewhere in her body. She’s not like this. She’s not...women aren't…fuck. 

“They respect you because you’re tough but fair. But they also say you’re mysterious and they know very little about you. That you seem sad sometimes and they wish they knew why. But you never tell them.”

Oh. 

Well that’s certainly not at all the colorful nicknames she’d imagined in her head. And they’re high schoolers. Since when did they develop empathy and start caring about her? The thought dissipates when Yennefer turns to her, her dark and almost purple eyes looking at Tissaia intently.

It occurs to Tissaia how little she actually knows about Yennefer other than what she’s seen when casually passing by or from other’s word of mouth. It doesn’t explain why she feels inexplicably drawn to her, a proverbial moth to a flame. 

“Have fun tonight, Tissaia. Let me show you a good time,” Yennefer tries to persuade. She tightens her hold around Tissaia’s waist, gives her a small smile. She’s absolutely radiant. 

“Fine,” Tissaia quietly relents and she thinks Yennefer can not possibly grin wider. It’s infectious and she feels herself adopting one as well. 

All in all, it’s a beautiful night. The breeze is cool enough to provide relief to their skin after it prickes with sweat after they dance underneath the fairy lights. The champagne flutes keep coming and near the close of it, Tissaia is feeling well and good. Yennefer has behaved and been a perfect guest, even putting a little distance between them. Rather than mourn the loss, Tissaia tries to focus on the fact that she’s here with the most talked about guest of the night. 

Vanielle wanders over later, a conspiratorial curl of her lips covering her face. She nudges Tissaia as she stands off to the side watching Yennefer dance with the ring bearer, all of the groomsmen fawning over her nearby. She’s told them all no repeatedly, deferred to Tissaia all night, and hung close throughout. 

“So, Yennefer Vengerberg. How long has this been going on and when were you planning on telling me?” Vanielle takes a delicate sip of her drink. 

Tissaia rolls her eyes. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“So you come to a wedding with her, have her hang on you all night. She’s practically curling at your feet like a cat and yet there’s nothing there? I know we are friends, Tissaia, but you do have a way of pushing people away.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tissaia frowns. 

“Well, you’ve commented more than once on her teaching style, the way she runs her classroom. And then you show up here with her? Is this a joke? I mean, I thought the two of you barely knew each other.”

Before Tissaia can open her mouth to reply, she’s being grabbed by the hand and yanked away from Vanielle, pulled through the vines and bushes of the garden off to the side of the music and frivolity. 

“What are you doing?” Tissaia hisses but Yennefer looks furious. 

“Why do you let that woman make anything off of you? You don’t have to stand up for me, but at least stand up for yourself,” Yennefer tells her. 

“She wasn’t making anything off of me. Nosiness is a part of her nature. I just look past it.”

“By letting her take subtle jabs at you? Your life and who you spend it with is your own business, but don’t ever let her make you feel guilty about who you are. You’re absolutely fucking gorgeous and every buffoon here knows it.”

Tissaia can’t help but scoff. “Right, like I’m the one that’s had a line on my dance card tonight. Each one of the guys in the groom’s party is enamored with the thought of taking you home tonight.”

“There’s only one person I’m interested in taking me home this evening,” Yennefer whispers lowly. “You’re the only one I see here.” 

She traces a gentle thumb across one of Tissaia’s high cheekbones, curves down to the small dimple of her chin. It makes Tissaia shiver despite the comfortable climate outside. 

“You can’t mean that,” Tissaia tries to work through what’s been said. “We hardly know one another at work, much less outside of it.”

“I find myself wanting to know everything,” Yennefer says seriously. Her hands are on Tissaia’s hips now and almost desperate. “Please, let me kiss you and make all of these fools jealous.” She’s closed her eyes and is so, so close.

There, under the glimmering luminescence and the green stems and leaves, Tissaia lets the woman kiss her who she barely even knows. When their lips touch however, it tastes like a flavor she’s always been familiar with. Traversing the slopes and curves of her body, it’s odd for it to not feel foreign. Like she’s been touching it all along. 

When the night should end, it doesn’t. It continues with the earlier caresses but multiplied, sound and taste also added. It’s a magical formula, a stunning combination of variants Tissaia never knew could work together. 

Their limbs and bodies are fused together by the time the night fades away and it’s hard for Tissaia not to want more mornings with the confusing and enigmatic woman pressed tightly against her.

It’s hard to know exactly who she is looking at when she sees herself in the mirror. She runs a hand along her naked flesh, made new by Yennefer’s fingertips. Tissaia smiles anyway. There’s so much time left for discovering. 


	9. 5+1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five times Tissaia tries to flirt and fails-one she gets it right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *You didn't really ask me to write it for you xxtorchxx but I saw you talking about it and did it anyway because I am a sucker for this format/trope
> 
> **Chapter rating is T

She’s always been well versed in her womanhood. As if her magic were not enough power alone, she was gifted with being born female. How easy it is once the art of seduction is introduced into a girl’s life, the absolute control she is able to wreak on anyone within her scope. 

Seduction isn’t limited to those of the opposite sex either. Tissaia has had many an encounter where she has performed for women to get an end result just as she has for men. They’ve both been malleable under her fingers, yet she keeps these proclivities in her distant past. Because that’s where they mostly lie-in the past. 

Life now is made up of a different kind of art, a slightly different kind of nuance that Tissaia has not learned in her long life. That which is the subtlety known as coquettishness. But not flirting simply to get someone into her bed or into her body. This is a whole other matter completely. The delicacy at which she embarks on the journey takes her by surprise.

_**\--Miss 1: “She’s stunning"--** _

She’s not sure she would categorize it as a time her feminine wiles failed, but it is the turning point of the way she viewed Yennefer. Of the way she treated her. 

They had been alone in the room, Giltine sent on his way. She’d needed it just to be the two of them. Something about the occasion called for it. All of her girls were leaving, destined for kingdoms far and wide across the Continent. While some would inevitably return, for the most part, they would be but passing figures in life. 

The girl in front of her had created a conundrum within herself. While she had been frustrated and put off by her initial sign of weakness in wanting to end her own life, once Tissaia had seen the dedication she had taken to the tendons, she’d developed a sense of respect for her. This one would never do anything halfway. 

It’s that conviction that led her to where she stood, watching observantly as Yennefer had tried to imagine a new life, a new body to exist inside of. Tissaia had run her fingers down the mirror, looked into Yennefer’s childlike face, and seen the woman she was about to become. 

“She’s stunning,” she had commented. Her own thoughts had taken to what Yennefer would look like after she had undergone the transformation. 

Those intense eyes had turned on the words, held her own for long seconds that stretched. It occurred too late, the realization that she had never uttered a praising phrase toward the girl at all. 

_What are you doing to me?_ she had thought then. Thankfully, Yennefer had dismissed it without comment and continued to stare at her reflection in the mirror. Now, looking back, it is easy to see that it was a choice that has reverberated throughout the years.

**_\--Miss 2: Sodden and so much left to give--_ **

The next time it happens, there are decades packed between them and a lot of unspoken things. But somehow, they’ve made their way back to one another. 

Time hasn’t exactly healed all wounds, just made them bearable, and now they can exist in the same place at the same time for longer than scant minutes. They’re not the same people they were when Yennefer left for Aedirn. They’re not even the same women that stood toe to toe and battled over the necessity of what they’re doing now. Lately, Tissaia has been so many versions of herself that she can barely anticipate the next thing she will become. 

The only things she knows for sure are the stone wall underneath her hand, a tankard gripped in the other, smoke in her nostrils, and Yennefer in her vision.

When she says it, _you have so much left to give_ , it doesn’t startle her so much as feels too exposed. Because Yennefer’s eyes are questioning in a different kind of way than they’ve always been and Tissaia absolutely doesn’t know how to handle what’s come out of her mouth. So instead of dealing with it, she knits her eyebrows together in frustration and leaves Yennefer behind. 

Trajectory and velocity come into play and Yennefer’s got a good amount of extra length in her legs, enough so that she manages to catch up to Tissaia and pull her out of the back of the keep and shield them behind the stones from others. 

“What was that?” Yennefer says, face bunched into confusion.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Tissaia dismisses and tries to walk back into the keep. A firm hand on her arm stops her. 

“No, you do. ‘You have so much left to give.’ That’s what you just said to me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Tissaia de Vries just made a pass at me because you can’t possibly mean that at all,” Yennefer’s voice turns playful. 

Tissaia wonders how good she is at lying but then figures it's easier to just leave some of the truth out. “So I can’t say something genuine to you without having an ulterior motive?”

“You’ve had one you’re entire life toward me. Is this happening because you think we are about to die?”

“I have no idea, Yennefer, but I simply did not want you to _give_ _up_ before anything began.” 

A smile curls at her lips, breaking into a full-on grin that shows her teeth. “You’re absolute shit at this.” Yennefer shakes her head. 

“I don’t even know what _this_ is,” Tissaia motions passionately between them. 

“Then let’s hope we live beyond tomorrow so that you have a chance to figure it out.” Yennefer breezes by her back into the keep. 

Tissaia finally lets out a breath she didn't realize she has been holding.

**_\--Miss 3: a drink with the girls--_ **

It’s been a year since everything broke apart, cracked open, was never the same again. And while some things died on that field in Sodden (a _lot_ of things), some are born again.

The commotion down the hall is spirited and rowdy. Around the table, glasses of wine and ale and every other spirit within Aretuza line the table as Triss, Yennefer, and Sabrina take to howling with laughter the drunker they get. 

It seems like forever since she’s seen them and she’s glad for their return, even if it’s like this. Making a face to show her mild distaste for the raucous behavior, she makes her way across the room to the scene which attributes to their moods. Yennefer peers up at her from her face pressed against the wood surface of the table, her purple eyes heavy in a dream-like state. Triss looks at Tissaia sheepishly and Sabrina gives a self-satisfied grin, not one to be regretful of any of her actions. 

“I’d ask what’s going on, but I feel I already know. What I wonder is why it must occur at this level of noise?” Tissaia ponders but with little force behind it, more amused as it leaves her lips.

“If you’re to join this conversation, you will need the courage of drink, I’m sure,” Triss’s eyes widen and she fills up a goblet with red wine. 

“I’ve barely seen her take a sip of spirits since I’ve known her,” Yennefer mumbles, the slur of alcohol creeping in.

“This might surprise you all, but I was young once and know a thing or two about drinking,” Tissaia raises her goblet and downs the whole thing swiftly. 

Three sets of eyes look on and awe. Sabrina raises an eyebrow and smirks while Triss works on a refill. Yennefer’s face remains unreadable and Tissaia shifts underneath the weight of her gaze as she sits beside her. 

“So what is this conversation that my nerves should be laced with drink to talk on?”

Yennefer squints her eyes and leans against her hand, elbow propped on the table. “Just the marks in our headboards.” Tissaia chokes mid-sip, wipes her mouth with her hand, and looks at Yennefer pointedly. The woman continues. “We’ve got some pretty interesting notches on them.”

“Like a witcher,” Triss tells and Yennefer glares. 

“It didn’t go so well,” Yennefer sits up and throws her shoulders back, throws a drink down her throat as well. Then she whirls on Tissaia again. “But enough about me. Let’s talk about you. The three of us have been going back and forth for over a year trying to determine whether you’ve let Vilgefortz deflower your modesty.”

“I beg your pardon?” Tissaia asks unbelievably.

“What a power move,” Sabrina shakes her head. 

“She’s referring to the fact that the man is probably a third of your age,” Yennefer clarifies. “But I bet he was still able to get you wet.”

“I have not slept with him,” Tissaia admits and feels her blood boil in a number of ways. The room narrows and it’s just she and Yennefer. 

“You’ve resigned the poor thing to the comfort of his hand? Tsk on you. And here I thought you would have relished in the attention of someone with the virility of youth.”

She’s going for shock but Tissaia has to play this without letting go of control. “Maybe this youth I seek is not from his loins but another’s?”

And while the saying goes _the third time is a charm_ , this one is not. They both know what Tissaia is referring to. Yennefer quickly stands and sets her glass down on the table roughly. With a lengthy look, she turns to her friends and speaks. 

“And on that note, I am officially past my limit. Girls,” she nods. She turns to look at Tissaia once more. “Tissaia.” It’s throaty and strained when it leaves. 

Tissaia wonders how much longer they can play the game this way.

**_\--Miss 4: a fight --_ **

To say that Tissaia is mad is an understatement. Yennefer sits in front of her on the soft bench, watching as the Rectoress decidedly ignores what she’s just been told. Her handwriting becomes jaunty as she tries to finish the last touches on the chapter she’s been penning. She jabs the quill down too sharply, poking a hole in the page. 

“I mean, why, Yennefer? What could you possibly gain from once again falling into his arms? Haven’t the two of you entangled one too many times with bad results?” She tries to hide her seething disappointment, that Yennefer has once again run to the witcher in a display of foolish arrogance. She rubs her temples. “The people need him as much as they need us. Now you’ve fucked him into hiding it seems.”

The word leaving her lips is uncharacteristic, but these are different times. She likes the man, truly, but she doesn’t like who Yennefer becomes when she’s with him. She doesn’t spend enough time thinking about her three failed attempts at getting Yennefer’s attention either. 

“Oh, I have? Maybe it’s his meeting with you that has turned his stomach off to the politics you’ve tried to rope him into,” Yennefer sneers back. 

“I work in the best interests of the Continent. As it so happens, he makes up a vital part of it.”

“When can you start working in _my_ best interest?” Yennefer bellows and slams her fist down on Tissaia’s desk, shaking the objects atop it. The inkwell stutters and tips to the floor, fragmenting and spilling black across the wood. 

Tissaia’s eyes go dark as she glares at Yennefer after assessing the mess. This is all too dirty for her liking, lacking the cleanliness she’s strived for her entire life. She becomes immobile, daring Yennefer to move forward. 

“Or have we reached an impasse? Are you once again having issue because your interest is tied directly to me?”

In a sense, it’s true. (In multiple ways, actually) But Tissaia is not about to concede that to Yennefer in any fashion. Unless…

“And what if it is?” Tissaia says sedately. And here they are again. Time number four. 

“Do you remember when this happened before? How I said you were absolute shit at it?” Yennefer brings her voice down what seems like a whole octave. 

“Shit at telling you what I want, even when it’s sitting right in front of me? When it has been for decades on end?” Her own belly curls around her words, the heat of them working their way between her thighs. If this woman, this incredibly unshakable woman would back down…

“And now we get to the true truth. That it’s him fucking me instead of you.” Yennefer’s look could create ice in her veins, but Tissaia works to calm her dueling desire and anger.

“See yourself out, Yennefer,” she commands lowly and picks up the quill again. If her penmanship was bad before, it’s but a scrawl now. 

When Yennefer slams the door, the pen shakily clatters from her hand. 

**_\--Miss 5: An Event--_ **

She looks in the mirror and tilts her head, appraises the dress she’s chosen, and then works to smooth it along her hips and thighs. The fabric of it is inherently lacking but these occasions always call for a bit less proper decorum and a little more naked debauchery. 

And least that’s how most of the events devolve. 

Tissaia’s not seen Yennefer since their fight, barely knows what to say to her tonight. She’s dreaded this moment for weeks and now she must announce her as the ambassador to the kingdoms, a liaison between Aretuza and the Continent. 

Even though she’s met the man supposedly going to be on her arm, her heart races in the wait. She closes her eyes and tries to gather herself. Becoming overly emotional simply will not do. 

“If you dally any longer, you will be leaving your chambers half-dressed. I figure while some might appreciate the show, you would not much want to give it,” her voice calls out behind her and Tissaia turns.

Her gown is in stark contrast to literally everything about her. It’s long and flowing, an off-white that looks beautiful lying atop her skin. Tissaia raises an eyebrow in surprise, but then goes back to worrying with her own appearance. 

“How virginal of you.”

“Well, I am a virgin in the sense that this will be the first time I play nicely,” Yennefer raises her shoulders in mock delight.

“And did you pick the color to match your escort's hair?” Tissaia feels bold enough to take a shot. 

“Your ability to astound me is never-ending. That backhand your tongue serves has gotten ever stronger I see,” Yennefer laughs without levity. She comes to stand behind Tissaia and presses her lips against her ear. “And if you must know, Rectoress, his presence was needed elsewhere.”

“I should think the Convergence will always see to it that he is busy,” Tissaia tries to make her way past the closeness. 

“Yes,” Yennefer says sadly and works to lace the ties at Tissaia’s back. Once she’s finished, she rests her fingers against Tissaia’s hips and stares at their reflection in the mirror. “But it will make for quite a lonely night if you know what I mean.” 

Tissaia has little time to process what’s been said before her own hand is being shoved with another atop it between her legs, pushing the fabric of the dress against her center agonizingly. She whirls around savagely on Yennefer, who sidesteps out of harm's way with a grin. 

“Things were supposed to be different after Sodden,” Tissaia says, batting away a lone tear at her eye. Because no matter what, she has feelings and all of this _hurts_. 

“Do you know why I’ve either ignored or dismissed your not so thinly veiled attempts at me? It’s not because I’m disinterested. Hardly,” Yennefer herself now sounds angry. She steps into Tissaia. “It’s because despite what you say, the things that leave your mouth, you are _still_ not ready for me. Ready for us.”

It’s like a punch in the gut and Tissaia reels from it. “There’s a drab ball to attend now,” Yennefer announces with a resigned sigh and just when Tissaia thinks she’s going to be left standing again, Yennefer holds out her arm in wait. “Are you coming or not?”

And as she threads her own around the one that’s been offered, she thinks that Yennefer is quite possibly right. While still a miss, it’s beginning to feel a lot less so when she’s got Yennefer on her arm. 

**_\--The Hit: a late night talk--_ **

For all of the heave and ho, the way it actually happens is ridiculously quiet. 

Yennefer has managed to do her assignment beautifully for six months but runs against some trouble in the way of negotiations with Cidaris’ new king. It seems as though she’s finally met her match, one not easily swayed by her charm nor intellect, so Tissaia is dispatched before the woman can make a catastrophic mess of it. 

Through measured talking and much back and forth, the two of them are able to come to a compromise with the region's eccentric ruler. Glad to be rid of politics for the day, she bids Yennefer farewell and retreats to her chambers within the castle walls. 

As she slips off her heels, the door opens and Yennefer walks in holding two flutes of bubbling liquid. After all of these years, she still manages to take Tissaia’s breath away. 

She extends one out to Tissaia and waits as she takes it from her. “To celebrate the end of chasing our tails with the King.”

“That I can drink to,” Tissaia sighs and brings the cool liquor to her lips. She glances up from her drink to see Yennefer’s eyes latched upon her. Becoming uneasy, she begins to move around the room. “So what’s next for you? What quest are you to be off on now?”

“A rather personal one, I think,” Yennefer shrugs and twirls the flute in her hand. 

“Oh?” Tissaia asks, removes first one earring and then the other, putting them to rest on a table beside her. 

Yennefer brushes her free hand along her chin. Takes another drink and hums. “It’s been going on for quite some time. I figured now is as good a time as any to do something about it.”

Suddenly it hits Tissaia that they are no longer talking about civic or political duty. Yennefer has come up behind her but does not connect them with touch. 

“Try one more time,” Yennefer instructs. 

Tissaia turns to look at her fully. “I don’t know what you mean.” She does. 

“Try flirting with me one more time.”

“I can’t,” Tissaia glowers, Yennefer’s words lapping back against the shore of her heart. “I’m shit at it, remember?”

Yennefer wraps her arms around her, cants their hips into one another. Tissaia lets out a breathy gasp and relents to Yennefer’s hooking finger pulling her chin up to meet her face. 

“You’re ready,” Yennefer whispers. “You’re finally there.”

She takes Tissaia’s mouth against her own and holds her as close as she can. Tissaia melts into it and feels the years now worth it all. 


	10. What You Are To Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Another "you didn't ask me to write it but I loved the idea, so I did it anyway" prompt from jzxr7. (Also, if you aren’t reading Sliding Into Her DMs and Her Heart, what is wrong with you? Do so now)
> 
> Prompt: Tissaia is trying her best to court Yennefer and it is just a fucking train wreck, helped in no small part by the fact that Yennefer thinks Tissaia is straight and banging Vilgefortz
> 
> Chapter rating: Heavy T maybe?

It begins after Sodden. After her lungs have healed and her resolve has steeled. 

The battle changed them, the possibility of their looming deaths shifting the way they had always known to exist with one another. Tissaia’s choice has come after the uncharacteristically silent vigil Yennefer sat at her bedside as she was nursed back to health. Days later, she’d appeared-dirty, battered, wrung out. She’d never moved, hardly letting anyone touch her to heal her own wounds in favor of aid going to the woman beside her. 

Those quiet hours built up in Tissaia and created the foundation for the beginning of her plan. 

And really, Tissaia is entirely too old for what she has decided to do. It’s been decades, over a century even, since she’s let herself feel anything toward anyone. She’s aware of what people say, calling her the most powerful sorceress on the continent. They’re kind but wrong. So it really is a wonder that she’s decided to actively court the person who has surpassed her in a lot of ways. 

Her language of caring (of dare she think it, love) is rather a simple one. It’s all that she knows though, all that she is capable of. Especially when she’s not sure she’s ever done what she’s doing in her entire life. Perhaps that’s why she’s downright shit at it. 

At first, it’s concise letters wherever Yennefer goes. She never tells Tissaia her destination. They do not discuss it. But Tissaia has been around long enough to understand the way Yennefer moves and so she makes sure her words are there to greet the woman whenever she might settle long enough for Tissaia to catch up. 

It’s never more than  _ please, stay safe _ or  _ be well on your journey  _ or  _ hope that you return someday soon _ . Always signed with a slight flourish, a more delicate touch than she affords anyone else on the receiving end. 

Mostly, they go without comment. All go unanswered. Tissaia tries not to wilt. 

When Yennefer does show again, Tissaia develops the language of intentional touch. When Yennefer barges into the classroom during a lesson, Tissaia reaches out to still her bubbling chaos with a gentle touch to the girl's hip. When she leads her out of the room, she skirts a hand to the small of her back. As they stand together, she lets her fingers delicately rest on an elbow, on the smooth flesh of her upper arm. 

The gestures are never returned. 

All she’s got left is her will to be kinder, more accommodating. So she pulls back on the chastisement, listens a little more about her trek across the continent. (always and forever searching. For what now, Tissaia does not know)

She’s particularly wound up one night, bemoaning some encounter with a magistrate that didn’t go her way when Tissaia cuts her off. 

“Have dinner with me tonight,” she blurts out. She lifts herself from her own daydream, looking up from the pages of a book across her desk where Yennefer sits. 

“I have dinner with you a lot of nights.”

Tissaia frowns. She tries a redirect. “I mean here, within my chambers. We can talk, catch up on all of your travels…”

“You mean so you can stuff me away and hide me from the Brotherhood,” Yennefer intercuts with a shrug. Her face grows in agitation. “Still trying to stroke them out to climax in order to keep them off my scent? I’m sure they’re more than vying for retribution.”

“What? No. Nothing like that. I just thought it would be…” 

_ Nice _ . That’s the finish to the sentence and yet it does not come. She lifts her gaze up to Yennefer’s dangerous purple eyes and feels her chest crack. The words die in her mouth. 

“Mmm. Tell your precious Brotherhood that, unlike you, I am beyond their orders,” Yennefer bids and rises from her chair. A portal pops behind her, but Tissaia stops her before she disappears.

“They know you visit me. Sometimes.” It’s quiet, soft, barely above a whisper. 

Yennefer looks amused but then vanishes. Tissaia drags her fingers roughly across the wood of her desk, screws her eyes shut, tries to get rid of the dryness in her throat. 

The thing about Yennefer though is that even though she’s gone for stretches that test the limits of Tissaia’s control, she always comes back. 

After the misunderstanding, the dinner invite, she appears again the evening before the assignment of the kingdoms. 

Tissaia has taken to showing the girls the steps for what seems like the hundredth time. There will be no more mistakes like in the past. Each king will be enthralled by the mage assigned to his court. No one will be going rogue again. 

The girls hold onto one another stiffly, each trying to anticipate the movements of the other. They shuffle their feet and do the steps, sure, but they’re lacking the grace that’s required. Tissaia sees this and pinches the bridge of her nose with a sigh, lacking another way to say a thing she’s said multiple times over. 

“You’re all shit,” Yennefer says from her perch off to the side. 

“Then maybe you should do more than lean against the wall and show them how to improve,” Tissaia snaps. 

A smile threatens on Yennefer’s face, but she wipes it away and stalks over to Tissaia. Somewhat roughly, she grabs Tissaia’s hip, trails a hand up her arm until she’s made her flatten her palm so that her own may lay against it. Everywhere she’s traced burns. 

Tissaia nods tightly and begins to sound off the steps. Yennefer glides into them fluidly and of course, she never misses a beat and makes her movements look flawless. Tissaia works to project the same amount of skill. Their bodies press perfectly together, sway wonderfully in sync. When they part, Tissaia tries to tamp down her labored breathing and regain her poise to the dozen sets of eyes watching them both intently. 

“Let’s take a little break,” Tissaia tries to smile and the girls break off. Yennefer saunters a little closer but says nothing. Tissaia sighs. “It’s been a while. What mischief have you been up to this time?”

It’s hard to work past the fleeting feel of her body, the prospective feel of her lips. Tissaia flicks a look quickly at them and then away. There’s no telling who they’ve touched, what they’ve done since she’s been away. 

Yennefer dodges the question. 

“Just checking in. Seeing what everyone is up to. Big night, tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Tissaia says slowly. 

She wants to ask Yennefer to accompany her on her arm, to show up and break every neck in the building by how fast they look at the two of them arriving at the same time. She doesn’t.

“And who might be on your hip when you walk through those doors, hmm?” It’s said suggestively. 

Tissaia wants to beg for it to be her. Before she can speak though, the doors open and in walks Vilgefortz. His eyes narrow a bit when he sees Yennefer standing so close to Tissaia and his mouth hangs open with the beginning of his sentence.

“Rectoress. Yennefer,” he nods. 

Tissaia can practically feel the chagrin rolling off of Yennefer’s body. She ambles toward him with a squinting of her own eyes, untrusting. 

“Ah, Vilgefortz. Last I heard of you, you were rolling down a hill and getting knocked out. Seems you’ve managed to recover quite well,” Yennefer goads. “Enough to be entertaining.”

Yennefer may as well be looking at her. Tissaia doesn’t miss the hinting in her tone and  _ no _ , that isn’t what this is. She’s got it completely and utterly wrong. 

“I will admit that my injuries were rather quick to recover from. Unfortunately, many of my brethren's were not,” he says sympathetically. Like Yennefer wasn’t there. Like she didn’t feel each one die within her too. 

She turns to shoot Tissaia a look, one that says _ I can’t believe you _ and  _ how could you with him? _ all at the same time and Tissaia wants to tell her she hasn’t and won’t. Can’t Yennefer see what she’s trying to do?

“The Rectoress and I were just discussing the meeting of the kingdoms tomorrow night. It seems she’s needing someone at her side,” Yennefer raises a sarcastic eyebrow. “Be a dear and make sure she’s accompanied?” 

Tissaia wants to disappear. That is the last thing she wants, the exact opposite of what she needs. Her stomach turns as she watches a smile spread across his face and his chest puff a little. 

“If you would do me the honor, Rectoress?” 

No answer comes and she has to watch Yennefer leave, agonizingly again. 

And of course, she’s standing beside him when Yennefer decides to bluster her way in the next time. By this point, surely everyone wants to know why she keeps popping up at Aretuza when she seems to hate it so. Tissaia wonders too.

She’s leaning against the bricks having an easy conversation with the mage when Yennefer walks by and grabs her roughly by the arm, practically dragging her down the hall. Not before a well-timed “Oh, fuck off,” toward Vilegefortz.

She’s all static and boiling emotion as she finally stops after multiple twists and turns around hallway corners. There’s nothing for her to disrupt this time, no event to crash. It’s the only m.o. she’s had for turning up ever since the battle at Sodden so to say Tissaia is confused is generous. 

“You didn’t send a letter.”

It comes out in a rush and Tissaia has to will the wild scamper of her heart in her chest. Yennefer repeats herself. 

“I leave for months and no matter where I go, it’s always been waiting for me. Usually something small but still there. Why didn’t you send one this time?” 

Her tone conveys the hurt she feels and Tissaia has to catch herself up to what is happening. She steps closer to Yennefer and glances both ways to make sure they’re alone. Her voice is soft but controlled when she speaks. 

“You never answered. I assumed you didn’t receive them or that they were unwanted.”

“And you never touch me anymore.”

“Yennefer…”

“Is it because of him, Vilegefortz? I know Triss joked that he was to be our new daddy but if that’s seriously the fucking case, I swear to it…”

“You swear to what, Yennefer? You pop in and out, hardly offering me more than a passing glance. Now you come in shooting from the hip with wild accusations.” Tissaia steps ever closer. “So what’s the rub here? Are you more upset that he might be in my bed or by the fact that you are not?”

Oh, her insane and audacious mouth. She cups a hand over it, surprised at her own words. 

“It’s never been an option,” Yennefer replies. “Right?”

Tissaia is tired. So fucking tired. 

Everything she has tried has been unsuccessful, every single thing a failure. She gives the last thing she’s got left. 

“I’m no good at this, at courting. I’ve mucked it up completely so far,” she says and reaches for a hand at Yennefer’s side. She trembles as she takes hold of it. Yennefer, frustratingly, says nothing. “Tradition is sort of a foregone conclusion in this instance. There will be no negotiations with your parents, nor an offering of either status or wealth. How can I when you already have it all?”

Regret fills her up. She’s got nothing to offer except herself and suddenly that seems like not enough. 

“Four marks.”

“What?”

“You’ve already done all of that. You gave my parents four marks for me. You offered me the status of being one of the continent’s most powerful sorceresses, only behind yourself. You’ve given me more than coin, made me rich in ways that continue to prove bountiful.” Yennefer tilts her chin up to look into her eyes. “So if it’s tradition you want, you’ve been courting me since I was fifteen years old.”

Tissaia would be embarrassed if Yennefer’s words weren’t pooling in her belly, if the coil wasn’t winding tight further below. They’re at a snapping point now, she’s sure of it. Whatever she does next will determine the course of their lives from here on.

“Has it worked then? Because I assure you, Vilgefortz means nothing at all when compared to you…”

And then she’s being shoved against the wall, hot fingers running under the hem of her dress to paw at the backs of her cold thighs, warming by the second as Yennefer’s equally molten mouth latches on and doesn’t let go. 

This is not exactly how she pictured it going initially, getting her skirt lifted in a darkened hallway. Somehow, it’s very fitting, having to rein in Yennefer’s chaos while staunching the swirl of her own. She manages to break them apart, to let them gather oxygen in their lungs. 

“Take me to bed, Tissaia,” Yennefer commands but gently. 

There is little inside herself to say no. So, blissfully, she doesn’t. 


	11. In These Night Hours, I Am Yours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post Sodden recovery and bed sharing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "What if after Sodden both Tissaia and Yennefer need to recover but they keep visiting each other's bedside to see if the other one is ok but then they keep passing out from exhaustion. Triss gets so annoyed she forces them to share a bed to make things easier for her and to make sure they don't hurt themselves when they feel weak."
> 
> For: My dearest, Zooeyglasszorba

There are things you tell yourself during war. A different person you become. The way the events twist and mangle a person is both astounding and frightening at the same time. 

It’s why Tissaia doesn’t know who she becomes after she manages to push herself up from the ground, everything akin to a sharp knife digging into her lungs, a hand over her mouth and nose as she fights agonizingly to take a simple breath. None of it matters though when she swims out of the delirium of dimeritium to see Yennefer lying on a makeshift cot nearby. 

She practically rolls out of her own, scrapes and claws her way across the expanse between them. Her knees are raw and her throat is too as she tries to shake her into consciousness. And maybe Triss has to pull her back, despite the wrapped wounds on her own throat, and deposit her in her own space again. 

There’s no longer control, only free fall. She’s a hollowed-out version of herself, scooped clean by the death and the hurt and the unknown. 

“You’re no good to her if you don’t heal yourself,” Triss tries to reason and glances back at the streak of red remnants on Tissaia’s pillow. 

But Tissaia has tears in her eyes and her very being aches from the fact that she’s done this to all of them. Had stood and practically begged them all to fight. And for what? One Nilfgaardian defeat surely signals their desire for retribution in the future and if she’s sacrificed the best of them, what will be left next time? 

“Is she dying?” she manages to ask on a croak.

“No, but…”

The stall stops Tissaia’s own heart. She reaches out to gently touch the bandages at Triss’s throat. Her girls. Her amazing girls. “Tell me.”

“She may never see again,” Triss answers, the pain of it, the probability of her own failure as a healer lining her words. 

Tissaia no longer feels anything. She’s become incredibly numb.

\---------------------

She awakens but there’s darkness. It does not scale back or dissipate even though she knows her eyes are open. When she should be looking on the world, it shows not. 

Rarely is Yennefer scared, but she feels it rise and ram hard in every part of her body. Something is wrong, something awful and swallowing. Something she has no idea how to make her way out of, like a fog that refuses to clear. 

“Stop panicking,” the soothing voice calls out to her in her shroud. 

“Triss?” 

“Mmm, yes. Calm down. I’m here.”

The first real thing she should say should be to query about her condition, about why no sight flares in her eyes. It does not come.

“I left her on that hill. I can’t feel her anymore. Tell me she’s alive, Triss. She must be,” Yennefer tries to sit up but she feels a firm hand pushing her back down. 

“Yes, she’s across the way from you. Resting, as you should be. Give me time to heal you both, Yennefer,” Triss explains. Her hand brushes along Triss’s neck, feeling the puckered flesh there.

“Oh, Triss,” Yennefer gasps sympathetically. 

“You passed me on your way out,” Triss reminds her. “You said you’d find Tissaia. That you’d save us all. And you did.” She shakes her a little as her voice is laced with pride. 

“But what yet awaits on our doorstep?” The question is a dark one. 

“Something to ponder upon tomorrow. Do not worry with it right now. I’ll see you soon.” She feels Triss move up and away. “She’s to the front and right.” With that, her magic floats out of touch.

Suddenly, it feels incredibly lonely. Without thinking really, Yennefer rises and shuffles her way to where she thinks Tissaia might be. Her knees hit the edge of the cot and she really is going to be embarrassed if she’s climbing into it with someone other than Tissaia. But calming her own breath, she hears the raspy exhale of Tissaia below and then piles in with her. Somewhere in all of it, she falls asleep.

She’s only woken when she feels the body beside her moving away, the warmth removed from her own. Sitting up slightly startled, she hears a tired sigh and knows who it belongs to. 

“I did as you told,” Yennefer begins. “See? Rested.” She exhales an elaborate breath.

“How is the wound on your side ever to heal or Tissaia to give her lungs room to inflate if you’ve taken to pressing against one another so in such a confined space? Get in your own cot,” Triss tells her. 

“I got...cold.”

“Oh, you did not. I’m serious, Yennefer. Don’t make this harder on me. I can’t deal with you being hard headed, nursing Tissaia back to health, tending to my own burns, and helping with others who were injured.”

“Fine,” Yennefer chuffs out, more than a little petulant. She even lets Triss lead her back to her original place. It feels too empty now. 

“Here, drink this,” Triss nudges and Yennefer takes what she assumes is a cup. 

“What is this?” She sniffs and makes a face. “Is your aim to incapacitate me?”

“In a sense. It’s something for your pain. I’m working on what to do about your eyes. There’s magic out there, I’m sure of it. It will just take some finding.”

Yennefer throws it back like a shot and then holds out the empty cup with a rueful look. When she feels the slight tingle of a magic she’s felt before, she hurries Triss on her way. Turning her head, she closes her eyes and waits to feel Tissaia again.

—————----

When she has enough strength, she moves to Yennefer’s side. Touching her shoulder gingerly, she moves to the edge of the blanket and looks into Yennefer’s unseeing eyes. 

She could use her voice for what she’s asking but lets her fingers signal her aim. They pull back the linen cloth and peer under to the puckered flesh that is raw and angry still on her torso. The tip of the arrow burrowed near her first and second ribs, just right below the swell of her breast. Common sense would be to leave it alone. Tissaia touches it and whispers a spell, causing Yennefer to hiss. Nothing comes forth.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” Tissaia apologizes. 

Yennefer shrugs. “No sight, broken ribs, internal bleeding. I think I’m hitting all the marks for a downright shitty time.”

“But not dead,” Tissaia whispers. 

“No,” Yennefer purses her lips and lets her head fall. She rolls it back and forth against her chest and then glances up in Tissaia’s direction. “And what of you? Has Triss figured out the cure for powdered dimeritium?”

“Triss is a skilled and gifted healer. She’s pulled many a soul back from their journey to the afterlife. But even this is testing her abilities.”

“It seems we both are,” Yennefer makes a clucking with her tongue. A cool breeze blows into the room and ruffles her hair a bit. She hums at the sensation and then sighs. “I can smell it, you know. The night. Who even knew that it had a scent? I can hear it too, the creatures leaving their daytime spots to come out to play.”

Tissaia listens because she can’t bear to leave Yennefer now. The emotion has tugged at her roughly ever since she’d stood in the hall after the meeting. The incessant beat of it something confusing in her head and heart _. I can’t do this without Yennefer._ Thump _. I don’t want to leave behind Yennefer._ Thump _. I wish Yennefer didn’t have to do this without me but she is to save us all._ Thump _._

She makes to stand, awash in her own truth, but Yennefer’s hand catches her from leaving. “Stay with me tonight,” she says in a rush. 

Tissaia can’t refuse her (probably ever again) and doesn’t. She doesn’t think about what they’re doing, what they’ve taken to in the dark hours. She curls into her all the same. One minute she’s awake and taking in her scent and the next sleep claims her. She jolts into the world again when she hears Triss’s voice. 

“I give up. Really and truly I do,” she says in exasperation and her mouth hangs open as if in question as she looks at Tissaia blearily squinting at her from Yennefer’s cot. 

“We can explain,” Yennefer mumbles from against Tissaia’s neck. 

“I don’t think we actually can,” Tissaia murmurs, ashamed. 

“Fine, have it your way. We will break down your cot and move it out. Someone else can be using it for a bed,” Triss holds her hands up and motions to a helper who walks to it and begins to fold it up. 

“But she wheezes,” Yennefer protests. 

“And you snore,” Tissaia snaps back. “What of it?”

“Oh, no. You two have chosen this,” Triss holds up a finger. “As the saying goes: you reap what you sow.”

As she leaves, Tissaia feels the wide grin against her and the laughing bark Yennefer lets loose at her throat. When the woman’s hands wrap tighter around her, she lets a retort wither away.

**——--------**

It happens on the third night. 

They’ve lain together without many words passing between them, instead holding one another in the solitude. Yennefer shifts though and Tissaia can almost feel the weight of her thoughts in her mind. She brings a hand to her cheek, resting it there.

“Your sight will come back. Don’t wallow in your lack of it,” Tissaia tries to soothe.

“Says the one with hers still. Such a simple thing, seeing. And yet how much you would miss it were you in my shoes.”

“Of course, you’re right,” Tissaia quickly agrees but then stops. “But maybe you must learn another way until it returns?”

“Teach me how to see again then, Tissaia,” Yennefer requests and lifts her hand to suspend in the air. 

They’re so close, not unlike the last couple of nights they’ve come to share the same bed. This time, however, there’s the desire for requested physical touch. On the surface, what Yennefer is asking for isn’t intimate but Tissaia knows, just _knows_ , that what she’s said is unsafe. 

Rather than explain it to this person she’s known decades on end, she lets her own arm reach out and her fingers wrap around Yennefer’s to manipulate her digits. Bending hers to leave only her pointer and middle finger, Tissaia pulls the girl’s ( _woman’s_ ) touch to the slant of her cheek. 

Yennefer sucks in a breath but then closes her eyes, giving herself over to gaining vision without sight. Tissaia’s mouth opens and begins to explain the sensations underneath Yennefer’s fingers.

“My cheek,” Tissaia begins and drags her touch slowly to her eyes, downward more. “My eyes, my nose.” Her breath hitches as she slides Yennefer across her mouth. “My lips.”

Yennefer pauses here, doesn’t let Tissaia move on. The rise and fall of her chest betray her, gives away more than Tissaia should be seeing. Her own follows suit when Yennefer runs a nail along her bottom lip, presses her thumb into the corner of her mouth. Her voice goes thready. 

“Show me more.”

No, she can’t. She shouldn’t. But then Yennefer’s fingers are following the cords of her neck, the apex of her shoulder. It circles until it sits atop the rampant fluttering inside Tissaia’s chest. 

“My heart,” she chokes out and how many people have even gotten this close to it? _None_. 

A smile curls on Yennefer’s lips and Tissaia knows that if her eyes were working properly, they would be on fire. She gasps as Yennefer wisps contact against her thinly covered breast. It’s shameful how quickly it responds.

“We cannot,” Tissaia tries to stop with a grip to the other’s wrist. Yennefer pushes impossibly closer, moves into her ear. 

“I will stop if you wish. But I long for no part of you to be a mystery to me,” Yennefer confesses. 

The tent is empty now, save for the two of them. Triss had come earlier to assess their condition before surmising that rest and solitude were the remedies to administer. She will not be due back for hours yet. Still, Tissaia feels incredibly guilty for entertaining the thought of letting this begin here, of all places. 

_A mere shell_ , Tissaia thinks and wants to be full again. 

She pulls the blanket more solidly around them, scans the space one more time, and listens for movement at the flap of the tent. There is nothing. 

Bringing Yennefer’s hand down and under, she lets her skim the flesh of her hips, the dip of her naval. _Sound_ , Yennefer reminds her because that’s her greatest dependency at the moment. So miraculously, Tissaia finds her voice to explain the things Yennefer’s eyes have never laid upon. 

“The insides of my thighs,” Tissaia speaks against Yennefer’s mouth, both of their hands shoved between them. And _my gods_ , this is happening. Right here, right _now_. 

There’s nothing stopping Yennefer from brushing against her, no barrier to hold her back. “Do you want me to learn this?” is the moan into her mouth. 

“Please,” Tissaia replies with absolutely no idea how to refuse something she’s never known she wanted until they were here, sharing a tankard of ale on a rock wall. 

Touch lands. She’s never the same again. Breathless against Yennefer is simply the greatest thing to be.


	12. The Consequences of Rinde

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carelessness, an ambush, some heavy feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: But what IF: the time is around Rinde, when the Chapter wants Yennefer dead (in a more catastrophic universe than Canon because drama) and plan an ambush on her. They try to keep the news away from Tissaia because of reasons, but she knows anyway and wants to stop it without it being known that it's her doing. So she just goes and intercepts the ambush being the boss she is, full cloaked, incognito mode on and Yennefer was fighting and then this... Small person appears and kinda devastates the party, and she's just like "wtf, who r u"
> 
> For: zooeyglasszorba/nigev
> 
> Chapter rating: Strong T for imagery

Magic is almost like a fingerprint. No two mages cast the same way, have the same signature on a spell. While the sorcerer or sorceress might not be explicitly known, the chaos they leave behind is a unique essence usually traceable if one were to look very hard. 

That’s why Tissaia goes to her after years apart, of not so much as a word uttered between them. Because Yennefer is pure energy, her vapor trail of lilacs and gooseberries clinging thickly to every town and backwater she leaves behind. 

But Rinde proves fruitless, a barren tree to be plucked from. Yennefer mourns the loss of an idea and an organ of her body while Tissaia is stripped of her pride and the ability to sway any part of her former pupil’s mind.

Her words fall on deaf ears and a combustible heart. The Brotherhood may look banal on the surface but as is the case with any part of life, there is always a seedy underbelly. Even the ones who turn their heads to refrain from seeing actually know what dark things come to pass when the regular flow of life becomes perverse and bent. 

Yennefer has twisted magic, shunned everything she’s learned. In her current state, she’s no good to them at all and when worth is lacking, death is imminent. To Tissaia’s face, they’re still agreeable, still placating to her fondness of the soul she pulled from a pen. 

Their eyes deceive them though. She feels the whispers at her back and works to untangle them to make sense of what is to come. The entire while, she plays inside their tune, harmonizes with them in order to keep them both alive as long as she can. 

But Yennefer has never gone about life in the most quiet of ways so after the news of a threat is tossed aside lackadaisically, Tissaia’s failure has turned hazard into peril. 

There is no sit and wait scenario. If Tissaia doesn’t work quickly, tomorrow might see Yennefer dead. All because of the Brotherhood that she signed her life away to sixty years ago.

———------

Blaviken already has a bloody history so spilling more onto the ground seems of little consequence to the corrupted minds within the Chapter. While the butcher of Rivia carved an indelible mark on the town forever, he also strapped the town on the Gulf of Praxeda with a reputation it does not seem in a hurry to shake. 

In fact, the streets are lined with seedy characters, even more suspect watering holes, and a palpable danger always on the air. It’s why she’s had to adopt the poise and dress of a man lest she be uncovered before the Brotherhood's coupe begins. 

Her crisp and flowing dresses have been exchanged for breeches, tall boots to the knee, heavy shirts, and vests that layer her body. Around her torso, she’s had to wrap her breasts, another precaution to appear as least like a proper woman as possible. Her hair stays wound tight and pinned against her head, adopting cloaks to shield her face if she has the need to walk through the gray streets. 

She keeps her ear to the ground, her mouth shut, and her dagger at the ready. Intercepting this will prove more than difficult, the need to alert neither the Brotherhood nor Yennefer to her presence at all. The bracelet at her wrist has her flying blind, the metal precious and hard to come by in the first place. 

But she wears it out of necessity, suppresses her own magic in her body to play both sides of the game. If she can dispose of the players, take the ambush of Yennefer out at its knees, she can return to Aretuza with her role intact and her former charge no worse for wear. 

It takes three whole days before Yennefer appears. Drawn to sob stories and pathetic lives, she moves with the skill of a wolf and the face of a goddess. Her aim is to swindle Blaviken for all it’s got, to prey on the sad lot that calls this hovel home. And the Brotherhood has bet on this to do away with her for good. 

Tissaia watches from underneath the heavy fabric of her hooded cloak, eyes sweeping and moving with every step Yennefer takes. She’s not had the time like this to study her in ages, to see the way she carries the puff of her bosom or the enchantingly vicious smile she can turn on with ease. 

The woman demands the best wherever she goes, guzzles the town of its best drink, never lets a morsel of subpar food slip past her lips. She fucks like a woman gone mad, conducts magic with blinding chaos. It’s hard to watch her burn so brightly that she destroys everything. 

It’s when Tissaia has moved away from the naked silhouette of Yennefer in the window, curled herself into another nook or cranny the town has too many of, that she sees the first cog of the plan. A shadowed figure ambles by, slows at Yennefer’s lodging for a little too long, and envelopes themselves back into the night as if they were a part of it. 

Her blood turns thick and cold, her throat swallowing the lump. She presses her thumb hard into the rounded hilt of the dagger at her hip, places a hand at the end of the scabbard for a flawless draw. It will not be long now. Tissaia must spring to action soon. The where and the how remain to be seen. 

——————

They call him the butcher and she quite likes the moniker. If there’s one thing that’s true about the witcher, it’s that he’s about as good at destroying things as Yennefer herself. 

But what does all of that matter as long as she feels good a little along the way? If not for herself, what would a life of pleasure and excess even mean? It’s not as if she’s ended up as she’d wished. True, she could best any mage on the continent, but she’s got no kingdom and that makes her damaged goods. 

Vulfuril was a moron. Many more after him the same. Even before, there was a line of monsters whispering into her ears to sway her fragile mind. Those who swore to it that they were out for the greater good, really only raising her skirts to press her against a wall with little consent. 

This is what control looks like. She operates under no one's thumb. She moves about the kingdoms freely, never has to acquiesce to the whims of another, and takes everything she can.

Blaviken has proved advantageous in a myriad of ways. There’s no need for coin (even though she makes her fair share of it) because her looks let her ride along on the art of seduction. Her belly is full and there’s no short supply of bodies between her thighs. 

And so what if none of them have been particularly satisfying since Rinde? She still manages to get off, even if it’s not to them. She’s still able to bring herself to the edge and tip over it, but she’s come to conjure a different face in her mind. So much so that she swears she sees her pressed against a wall as Yennefer walks down the street, a fleeting look passing between them and then other bodies shuffling between and she’s simply gone. 

It’s this craziness that insinuates itself into her life with each minute and hour she stays in Blaviken. If she’s listening to the plights of the town, she’s thinking of her somewhere deeper down. If she’s drinking a fine wine, she wonders what it would be like to share a friendly glass with her. Inexplicably, when she comes, it’s her face she sees. 

It’s time to leave. To run. The past is catching up to her again, ghosts everywhere. She’ll leave on the morrow. Maybe the specters won’t follow her then. 

But as the thought takes root, she feels the sensation of magic rush in like a tidal wave. Not there one moment and then surging the next, she has little time to ready the weapon at her side before she’s drowned in bodies on every side. Outnumbered, she counts six surrounding her and feels at least another half dozen somewhere in the shadows. Twelve men have been sent to take her down. 

She will make them all pay. She will send them back without body parts or to their early grave. Their tongues will be ripped from their mouths and they’ll be left to report back with their own blood on their fingertips. 

The blows begin to rain down and she’s a skilled fighter even without her magic, but the sheer magnitude of how frequently she’s having to parry or dodge while still trying to get her own striking hits in is overwhelming. 

She tries a concussive blast but they’re prepared, mages and proper fighters in their own right. It does little against the onslaught. Her footwork becomes sporadic and more survival mode. During the commotion, she manages to bring an arcing slice across one of their throats and gets past a defensive shield to crush another’s spine. But for the two she drops, two more materialize and Yennefer is running out of steam. 

For streets so used to blood, Yennefer doesn’t want to die here in Blaviken. Ambushed by her own kind hardly seems the way to go, not the grandiose end she’s always wanted from her life. She’s done fuck-all yet and power holds little if you do little with it. It’s this she’s thinking as she sidesteps another slice of a sword, turns to lock with another, and tries to hold the blade from biting into her skin. 

Suddenly, blood spurts from a dagger buried in her opponent’s jugular, his sword thumping to the dirt. Behind her, a commotion sounds and by the time she can turn, another lifeless body is staring into oblivion from the ground. She watches in awe as the dropped sword is snatched from the ground and thrust upward into the gut of an approaching body then quickly wrenched free and cutting through another at the knees. 

Yennefer hears the muscles and tendons sever, the bones crack. The mage falls on stumps into the dirt, tears of anguish seeping from his eyes. Yennefer turns just in time to grab another by the neck, to squeeze until the life ebbs away and crumples out of her grasp. She catches sight of the black as pitch hooded figure, small and deadly, sending the last of the assassins to the ground. 

She’s so lost in what’s transpired that she is unprepared for the force that yanks her from the street and down through twisting alleys and side streets. There’s no air left in her anymore and the hand death gripping her own is one she can’t get a handle on, only the iridescent bracelet shining from underneath the cuff. A finger brushes against it and she buckles against the clapboard wall of a building as she feels her magic leech away. 

Her eyes are wide and she’s gripping her fingers, trying to will the magic back into them. The masked figure’s hood is thrown back and blue-green eyes are burning into hers, small hands rough against her cheeks. 

“Are you alright?” Tissaia whispers, still out of breath and frantic. 

Yennefer’s spiraling. All those times she’d imagined her, could practically see her face and now she’s here, in Blaviken, saving her life. 

“You...you just killed them all.”

“The Brotherhood, I...I had to do something.”

Yennefer touches her then, runs an incredulous hand across her face, tries to tangle her fingers in her bound hair. She doesn’t even think as she throws open her cloak and paws at the layers, shoving aside tunic and shirt, pressing frenzied hands across the barely-there slope of her breasts. 

Tissaia reaches under her garments, makes a face as she works, and removes the bandage from underneath. She unwinds her hair from atop her head and lets it pile down in wild waves at her shoulders. Yennefer reaches out and yanks it, pulls Tissaia into her body by the locks on her head, and buries her nose in it as she fills herself up with her smell. Until she remembers the thing on her wrist. 

Backing away, she throws back the sleeves of the shirt and sees the item cuffed around her delicate wrist. 

“What have you done to yourself, Tissaia?” She stares deeply into her eyes. 

“I couldn’t risk the Brotherhood following me. I couldn’t alert you to my presence. This had to be done with the utmost secrecy. That’s why I sought out a smith who could craft something such as this.” She holds up the metal circle locked onto her skin. “I had to suppress my magic and go in blind.” 

Yennefer grabs her wrist roughly, harshly pulls the thing from her body. It makes her feel sick as she grips it tightly in her palm, practically indenting it in her flesh. “You insane, foolish woman. Why on earth would you do something like this? You could have been killed.”

“It was a chance I was willing to take,” Tissaia raises her voice.  _ Yells _ it. 

“The Brotherhood will have your neck now that mine isn’t broken and on the ground!”

“I warned you in Rinde! I tried to save you then but you wouldn’t listen. There is no nobility in shedding blood for differences in thought. Otherwise, it holds no grander meaning, no honor.”

“You speak of nobility and honor, yet you are a part of this very organization that sees fit to destroy what it creates if it operates outside its purview.  _ These _ are the people that you cavort with.  _ These _ are the mages that influence an entire continent of sorcerers! How can you stand for that?”

“If not for me, what goodness would they ever get?” Tissaia combats and Yennefer scoffs loudly. Her face goes stoic. “I know I have been downright cruel to you and that is my biggest regret, but it was necessary for the both of us.”

“Do not aim to tell me what  _ I _ have needed in my life,” Yennefer sneers against her. “How many nights, despite that, have I dreamt of you? How many times have I had to trap my hand between my own thighs when I thought about your face, even though your cutting words live in my very soul?” 

Yennefer has gone back to grabbing her severely, curling her fingers once again in her hair. Tissaia closes her eyes against it for a moment but then shoves Yennefer hard, pushing her away. Her eyes hold anguish within them.

“And how many nights have I had to do the same?”

Quiet passes between them. Yennefer loses her words. She watches silently as Tissaia disappears into a portal and she’s left alone again. It will be the last time they see one another until she’s standing by her side, contemplating dying again. The next time, Sodden will loom.


	13. To Carry You In My Arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three points in time, three different ways their hearts change toward one another

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Bridal style carrying  
> For: nigev
> 
> **Okay, so I don't know about how the third snippet panned out. I usually don't love the trope I went with, but I had to go the traditional route with these two just once. All customs in that section are based on Polish tradition (or at least what the internet told me was) I also "borrowed" some of Tissaia's dialogue from the Witcher books, so I can't claim to determining her viewpoints. Those all belong to Sapkowski when you see them here.

She’s so light inside her arms.

That’s the first thing Yennefer thinks about when she carries her the first time. How small she feels, how fragile, how unlike the larger than life projection she shows the world. Tucked into her chest, breathing erratic, Yennefer watches the flutter of her eyelashes, looks at the glistening of her lips. At her shoulder, her fingers curl and hold on for dear life. 

This is what the war has done, pared them both down to the bare bone. The pressure of the lives of hundreds of men, some women, dig into her chest. She’s watched things die, sometimes by her own hand, but it doesn’t change the gravity of it. She can appear aloof and uncaring all she wants but when everything is left stripped, Yennefer can’t feign a lack of empathy.

Just like now.

The backs of Tissaia’s thighs are under her hands and she’s everywhere, simply everywhere, in Yennefer’s senses. The touch of her, the smell of her hair, the raggedness of the breath leaving her lips, the way she looks absolutely spent as Yennefer carries her along-no, she can not summon an ounce of ill emotion when it feels like she’s breaking apart from the inside. 

It’s been a week since Sodden. Seven days and nights of sitting by her bedside, of feeling every cough that wracks her body inside of her own. Tissaia swims in and out of consciousness long enough for both Triss and Yennefer to try a remedy, then she is pulled under by the herbs or oils that they’ve concocted to coat her lungs and throat. 

Triss had explained it must be this way. If she’s pulled under by sleep, she will not exert herself. Neither of them will have to battle against her hard head. But Yennefer feels like clawing herself up a wall while they wait. 

Her own strength hasn’t returned full force but she shuffles her feet along as she makes her way back to Tissaia’s bed, depositing her gently on the pillows and sheets and wiping the stray hair out of her face. This too will pass but the end seems so far out of sight that Yennefer has trouble imagining it.

Standing back up straight, she takes a moment to watch the rectoress sleep, to find small comfort in the steady rise and fall of her chest. There are things to be done, countries to be visited, people waiting for the tide of the war to turn. Yennefer knows that she needs to go back, to fight for what they’ve started, but she can’t make it past the fourteen names that will go on the monument they’re speaking of erecting.

_ Not fifteen. _

It will never read  _ Tissaia de Vries _ . Yennefer will follow her to death’s door and do whatever she must to pull her back from walking through if it means that she will still be a presence in her life. How stupid she’s been, how childish. To have battled the one person who hadn’t given up on her in her entire life.

Yennefer makes a vow to herself. The next time Tissaia is in her arms, it will be for a much different reason.

\----------------

They’re in the stacks when it happens again.

Aretuza’s library is vast and goes from ground to sky. Yennefer has never spent much time in here, much preferring to use the world as her classroom. Without a war brewing and being waged, time has become more empty and she finds herself returning to the school more than she’s sure is acceptable. 

But there’s a line, a split, between before Sodden and everything after. And even though they’ve not uttered so much as a word about the time Yennefer has spent here working to aid in Tissaia’s recovery, the fact remains that their relationship has much the same split that life does. 

Yennefer is lost in this thought when a book falls past her head and thumps loudly onto the ground, sending an echo out around the room. Gripping the wood of the ladder even tighter, Yennefer locks her elbows and peers up past the skirts of Tissaia.

There’s a very inappropriate joke about the position she’s taken up but Tissaia’s bright blue eyes are looking downward at Yennefer and a small, dissatisfied frown pulls at her lips. 

“I didn’t move an inch,” Yennefer mutters and glances over to the book on the floor. “So let’s chalk my near-death experience up to your clumsiness.”

“Hardly,” Tissaia rolls her eyes and goes back to running her hands along the titles, leaning in closer to see the bindings of each. 

Yennefer huffs and ruffles a bit of hair that’s fallen into her eyes. “Why write a book on magic? How many others are simply gathering dust here, hardly to be read at all?”

She stills above Yennefer, gets a far off look, and then sighs. “Our very way of life was threatened which I don’t take kindly to. Magic has been around for hundreds of years, has survived throughout the ages. But I feel us on the precipice of something dark, something different.” Her look down at Yennefer is a small warning for what she says next. “No one is born a wizard. No one should be born one. It should be a life of choice. 

“For a woman, this is even more precarious. We were on the battlefield at Sodden. We defy the order of the world in this life we live, replacing one mantle of our womanhood with another. Being at Sodden just reinforced what I’ve always thought, Yennefer. This is no type of life for a child. Each one of us must decide what she wants to be-a wizard or a mother.”

“But  _ you _ took that choice from me,” Yennefer feels her grip tighten on the ladder as she grounds the words out. 

“You knew my view on this and yet you still had Giltine perform the transformation. The existence that you’ve lived, the things you’ve seen. Would a baby in your arms have been conducive to the way you live? To the way any of us do?”

Yennefer’s life has been a smear of blackness, a jagged cut across the expanse of it that never really heals or changes. At one point, years ago, she thought a baby could fix that. Now, she realizes nothing will ever fix what has already been ruined. Calming her anger, she looks up again into sympathetic eyes.

“So you must write a book on it? Why not just make sure the Brotherhood know…”

“Because I am not immortal, Yennefer. One day, I will not be here. Magic, however, will still exist. I must make sure that those who come into Aretuza understand both the importance and severity of the choice they make.”

They fall silent then and Yennefer shrinks inside herself. Tissaia is right, of course, and even if Yennefer were to admit this to her, it would be begrudgingly. She’s contemplating this when the ladder begins to jerk underneath her hands. With barely enough time to react, she lets go and steps so that she may catch the falling body raining down from the sky.

Tissaia lands in her arms with a slight squeak and chest heaving. Yennefer’s eyes are wide and she’s trying to manage how exactly she has come to have the woman in her arms when it would have been just as easy for her to land on the floor. They stare at one another awkwardly before Yennefer nods and sets Tissaia gently on her feet. Surprisingly, she doesn’t work to extricate her arms from around Yennefer’s neck.

“I wish I could convince you to be my co-author,” Tissaia says quietly, almost offhandedly. 

And since Sodden, she says things like this sometimes. Like she’s too full up on them and she has to let one go occasionally or burst at the seams. But she always acts disbelieving they’ve left her mouth too. It’s because she’s not sure of how they will be received. This time, Yennefer just smiles.

“While I’d make a shit teacher, I’m sure I would be an even worse writer,” Yennefer jokes. Tissaia’s face goes pensive and somehow, Yennefer feels as if she’s let her down. “Maybe your next book will find your wits matched more equally.”

Tissaia smiles. “Another one? I’ve yet to get through this one. Perhaps we should slow down on what the future holds and focus on the now.”

And because of Sodden and because of the past and because, because,  _ because _ , Yennefer whispers a faint “Finally, we agree” and kisses Tissaia like she has wanted to for a countless number of days. 

\---------------

She’s never believed much in charm, but there must be some truth to its almost law of thirds. Call it lightning striking or fate being fulfilled, but the last time she carries Tissaia is the absolute best.

The breeze has turned cool across the Continent and they decide that  _ wrzesien  _ is the best time to begin again for them. Yennefer is adamant about not having it take place in Aedirn, the sort of version of home holding too many painful memories. Neither of them dismiss the idea of where Tissaia has come from. 

“It’s been so long, there’s little holding me to my life before I came to Aretuza,” Tissaia whispers to her one night under candlelight, fingers skimming the flesh of Yennefer’s arm. Neither of them suggest the island of Thanedd either.

Somehow, Yennefer drags her to the isles. She’s spent time in Skellige, knows Crach better than anyone, and he greets them with open arms after she tells him of her plans.

The joining of them is very quiet and lacks too much pomp and circumstance. Yennefer wears the fresh flowers in her hair, the sprigs of rosemary as customary to tradition. Several of their guests link arms, circling the two of them as they stare at one another with excited smiles. 

After the bread and salt are presented, the quick drinks of strong alcohol to bless them in a happy and long life together are consumed. Sabrina and Triss drink quickly and Crach pours a few more for himself before passing off congratulations and reminding them of what he’s prepared for the two of them after the festivities wind down. 

They make their way to the thatched roof cabin after saying their goodbyes to the handful of friends, linked arm and arm and hand in hand. It’s silent, the weight of what they’re walking toward heavy on both of their minds. Yennefer gets wound up in it, of this beginning to forever. 

It’s not like she doesn’t know every inch of Tissaia’s skin, of her incredibly complex heart. Yennefer dips out of Tissaia’s arms and loops her own around her legs, lifting her so that her new bride lets out a yelp. Her eyes are wide and Yennefer can help but let a smile play across her lips that shoots straight to her own heart. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Tissaia mutters.

“You’ve latched your boat onto my dock for good now. That’s on you,” Yennefer nuzzles against her and keeps making her way to the soft illumination of the lodging. 

“As if you’re the dock, dear,” Tissaia reflects back with a tilt of her hand and the way she runs her fingers down the base of Yennefer’s neck still manages to make her shiver even after decades of knowing the woman. 

She takes her inside of her arms into the warmth of the cabin, marvels at the way the light pattern of rain begins as soon as they shut the door. Tissaia is letting the cream colored fabric of her gown pool to the floor, crossing the space between them with her naked body, and removing the flowers from Yennefer’s hair.

The components of them have formed to make this moment, of a hopeful life unending. Somehow, the word  _ wife _ feels sweeter on her tongue knowing the cloud of their history. Now, it feels like a parting with only the sun. 

When Yennefer feels the slick and heat of the gorgeous soul beneath her, she feels an eternal summer blooming in her heart.


	14. I Find My Haven Underneath Your Body

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tissaia/Yennefer bodyguard AU
> 
> or
> 
> some of the plot of the "Blackout" series that has MyAnna in it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *For: zooeyglasszorba  
> *Chapter rating: T

Droplets pelt the windshield in another one of the Continent’s downpours. It’s the rainy season and it seems that days are covered in gray clouds more than the sun peeking through for even a second to warm their skin. 

Yennefer turns from the window as the world passes by, glances over to Tissaia on the other side of the car. Her feet are pulled under her and she leans her head against the rest behind her, phone tilted within her hands and poking away. 

As if sensing eyes upon her, she looks up from her device and holds Yennefer’s gaze. They each stare at one another, a whole world of speech floating between them despite not saying a word. Their thoughts are much in the same vein, the bulk of them boiled down to the same adjectives and verbs and nouns:  _ beautiful, touch, caress, your body, my hands, quiet, yearn _ . 

This tension, while not new, hasn’t always been composed of this specific set of traits. Tissaia de Vries is probably the most famous face in all of the country right now and Yennefer is a mere peasant where the woman is concerned. Yet, she has been assigned to protect her and she’s fallen head over heels in love.

\------------

Their first meeting is a tenuous one.

Surrounded by at least ten other bodies (mostly men) Yennefer feels like a fish out of water and wonders why she is standing here at all. For over a year, she has been a part of the Westminster Security team, following behind self-absorbed minor celebrities and local politicians who had more of a proclivity for Soho walk-ups and back alley coke deals than their own offices or homes.

She’s seen it all, has been paid for her discretion and silence. So why she is being beckoned, singularly, into Tissaia de Vries’s room at her massive estate, is unknown and she has to quell the foreboding sense of dread. As she walks into the room of the first female mayor they’ve had in decades, she is struck by how  _ normal _ she seems. How unlike her fellows she is. Unlike her male counterparts, Yennefer has heard no murmurs of corruption or untoward behavior. She is the picture of poise and grace, of quiet severity and beauty. She looks like she does not suffer fools in the least, so Yennefer straightens her back and shoulders, look focused on the wall behind her head.

“You requested me, Mayor,” Yennefer says simply. 

“I require the best people around me,” Tissaia begins as she works to put on her earrings. She looks Yennefer up and down from her mirror. “And I hear you’re one of the most promising hires the company has seen in ages.”

“One thing can certainly be said of me: I will do whatever it takes to protect those whom I watch over. I’d lay my life on the line to do my duty.”

“That’s good to hear,” Tissaia says, slipping her heels on and click-clacking her way across the room. “But let’s hope it never comes to that.”

The last part is a low voice close to her ear. Yennefer feels goosebumps prickle despite the flush of her skin.

——————

It’s rain, rain, never-ending rain, but Tissaia is still a vision when she walks into the intimate lights of the club. Yennefer is not far behind, observing everybody crammed into the place, trying to ascertain whether the woman she trails is safe. 

Expensive liquor fills cups and every who’s who in town either sits at the bar sipping their drinks or are tucked away in semi-private booths. Her eyes follow her the entire night, the way her fingers curl around her glass or the way she laughs at people who look at her as if she hangs the moon. 

But it’s Yennefer she beckons to follow her to the ladies' room, Yennefer who she bids to lock the door, and Yennefer who she is pressing into the porcelain of the sink and smiling lazily at through the alcohol and merriment. 

“Tissaia, you’re…”  _ drunk _ Yennefer wants to say but Tissaia pulls away from her forehead resting against her neck, her look severe and her hand on her cheek. 

“No,” she says firmly. “I’ve had some drinks, yes, but I’m as clear about this as anything.” She traces the curves of Yennefer’s neck, throws a strand of hair back over her shoulder. “Imagine having to hide who you are every single fucking day. But you see me, don’t you?”

Yennefer doesn’t think about how she’s never called the woman anything than her formal title, never been bold enough to call her by her first name. But now she’s feeling her pressed up against her and it’s hard to concentrate on anything other than wanting her in a way she hadn’t anticipated. 

“Yes,” Yennefer whispers and doesn’t even try to back away when Tissaia leans in, her breath a feather of a touch against her lips. 

A loud beat sounds on the door, drunken laughter on the other side. “Hey, open up in there,” a high pitched voice commands. 

Both women sigh and Yennefer presses a kiss to her cheek before opening the door and letting the world advance upon them again. Tissaia presses against her hotly when she heads outward into the club, the music loud in both their ears. Yennefer bites her lip hard.

——————

“What is it?” Yennefer questions, brows knit together as Tissaia stares blankly at her laptop screen. 

Her mouth hangs open and if Yennefer’s eyes don’t deceive her, tears are beginning to pool. She swallows audibly and then lets out a disbelieving sigh. 

The atmosphere is all wrong and the office too dark, so Yennefer doesn’t think about proximity as she rounds the woman’s desk and stares at the screen. She can smell Tissaia’s perfume and feel the tiny points of pressure where they touch. Trying to not revel in the feel, her jaw clenched as she reads the headline, skims the article. 

Stegobor’s face fills the screen and Yennefer feels the burn begin inside her blood. 

—————-

A few of the guys in her detail point at the large metal door with a solemn look on their face, but don’t even try to make their way out of it. When Yennefer opens it with a grating scrape, she wonders why no one has come out at all. 

Tissaia is standing near the low railing overlooking the bowels of the city, the night sounds of it ringing all around and going back into their ears. Sirens wail, horns honk, tires screech, incessant traffic flows below. Yennefer approaches the ledge and stops when she pulls up beside Tisssaia’s body. 

The lights of the city cradle her face and she’s downright ethereal against the backdrop of the world. Yennefer wills her heart to stop clenching.

“Do you know why I ran for mayor?” Tissaia asks, voice sounding distant. Far off. A place Yennefer cannot touch. She says nothing and shifts on her feet. “Corruption is a given. An inevitability. For every ounce of good, there is a pound of evil lurking to swallow it.”

She turns to Yennefer and there are tears in her eyes. “Stregobor has seen fit to ruin me. I don’t know if I make it out of this.”

Yennefer shakes her head, reaches out a hand to console but then thinks better of it (remembers her job) and pulls it back. “If not for you, who will see us all through? You’re stronger than the lot of them.”

“I only possess the power that they give to me. But they’ve set out to strip it away from my hands. Even the people I trusted once before seem out to oppose me,” She stops and looks pensive for a moment. “I’ve fought my entire life to have control, to not perpetuate chaos within the spaces I have operated. Now it is poised at my doorstep from faces I’ve considered familiar for years.”

“The true measure of people is shown when their backs are against the wall. It’s fight and flight working in tandem. Your enemies...they run until you’ve cut them at the knees,” Yennefer sweeps her vision around the rooftop, ever checking for threats. 

A hand in her own stops her scan. Tissaia’s eyes are troubled, her fingers shaking as they work to grip Yennefer’s tighter. 

“Will you ever betray me?” Tissaia whispers. 

“Never,” Yennefer answers quickly, truthfully. She responds with her own squeeze. 

—————-

The shot comes from nowhere, materializes on the vapor of the air. 

Her entire career has been building to this, a moment so profound as to alter to the rest of days. The training and the practice and the simulations have all made Yennefer damn good at what she does. Still, what happens manages to wreak havoc on everything. 

One minute they’re standing on the street waiting for Tissaia’s car to be pulled around and the next, Yennefer is wedging herself between Tissaia and the speeding slugs. They rip through her shoulder, sending a quick spray of blood out before beginning to seep in earnest. 

There are screams all around and bodies writhing but all Yennefer can focus on is the searing pain in her body, the press of Tissaia’s small form underneath her own. Her vision blurs a little and she closes her eyes against it and the fire radiating. 

Her ears buzz a little too as she tries to regain a solid and fulfilling breath, only to have it taken away again as Tissaia presses a frantic hand to her cheek, fingers first brushing aside the wave of brown locks spilling in her face. 

Glancing down, Yennefer sees bright crimson blooming across Tissaia’s blouse and she panics but can get no words out of her mouth.  _ You’ve been hit _ , she thinks and wishes that Tissaia could read minds. 

“Yennefer, listen to me. Yen, focus!” she cries from beneath her and Yennefer would float along on the new usage of her name if she could stop the untamable bounce of her thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” Yennefer wheezes out an apology and leans forward, burying her face in Tissaia’s neck. 

It’s the last thing she remembers before everything goes black. 

——————-

Two days in the hospital and a pocket full of painkillers later, Yennefer is on her way home. Breathing a fog onto the window that has been cooled from the rain, Yennefer takes her good arm and wipes it away. 

Across from her, Tissaia lays down her phone and pulls her legs out from under her. Slowly, she makes her way to beside Yennefer, careful to watch out for her bandaged chest and arm. 

“Are we ever going to talk about you saving me?” Tissaia asks and fidgets with her hands in her lap. 

“It’s not necessary,” Yennefer sighs. “I was simply doing my job.”

Tissaia stills at this. Her hands no longer work against one another. “Ah, so that’s what you call this. Just doing your job.”

Yennefer spins away from the window angrily. “And what would you prefer? Stregobor twisted your relationship with me, made me out to be the villain and you to be lacking any good sense in having me by your side. And if we are being honest, it embarrassed you, your good reputation suddenly a little bit smudged to be near me.”

“That’s not true,” Tissaia disagrees. 

“Then why did you back away from me? Ever since that night of the council party when we almost…”  _ kissed _ . Yennefer bites off the word and lets it fade away. Waving a hand, she goes back to looking out of the window. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

They pull up to the brownstone of her home, the car coming to a stop. Rather than wait for anything more to be said, Yennefer grips the door handle and exits. On the other side, Tissaia’s door pops open and she leans down quickly. 

“I’ll only be a second,” she tells the driver and then shuts the door.

“What are you doing?” Yennefer sighs tiredly. 

“I’m walking you to your door,” Tissaia says simply. 

Yennefer lets her and as soon as she feels the key give way in the lock, Tissaia is insistently pressing a hand against the small of her back and closing the door behind them. Her hand is in Yennefer’s hair and her lips are hot against Yennefer’s and  _ damn _ , her shoulder hurts but Tissaia feels too good to push away. 

“You incredibly stupid woman,” Tissaia pulls away and runs the ruby red of her nails across Yennefer’s lip. “You saved me. I won’t ever forget that.”

“I’d do it a thousand times over,” Yennefer tells her and how can you love someone without having even kissed them? She inexplicably had though. The kiss has only helped to solidify it. 

“In what world can you be mine?” Tissaia asks, pained. 

She’s got cameras constantly poised on her, enemies from her politics at every turn. The searing pain in Yennefer’s shoulder reminds her that the threat against Tissaia is very real. She wants to shield her from everything. 

“Maybe in this one,” she says and kisses her soundly. 


	15. The Night Gives My Dark Soul Refuge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Vampire AU-Tissaia struggles with being a vampire, wants to be intimidating but isn’t  
> For: zooeyglasszorba (sorry it took so long)  
> Chapter Rating: Mild M? (but not for sexual situations, per se)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally intended to be done. Then I got three more prompts that I've sat on for months. For a while, I wasn't in the Yennefer/Tissaia headspace and somewhere else altogether. I suppose with all the new filming pictures, my interest has been piqued again.

She never develops a taste for blood, hates it when she has to bring the metallic bitterness to her tongue. Still, if she’s ever to survive (which she undoubtedly wants to) then she has to adapt to the hard fact of the matter: she’s a vampire. 

And for several hundred years, she’s managed to survive on the plasma of those strictly animal. It’s worked wonderfully—until quite recently, that is. 

Times have changed so incredibly much and where she was once able to operate pretty much alone, apparently they don’t make vampires like they used to, so she’s come under fire for her way of life. 

The Brotherhood sees to that.

Its chapter has been around for almost a millennium, but the old faces and the old way of life are all but gone. A new era has heralded in and they’ve adopted new ideas. Ones Tissaia has had trouble agreeing with. 

“The world has become a writhing mess of overpopulation,” the smug face of the leader, Vilgefortz, explains. “The lives of the vampiric community must include the subsistence on the blood of humanity. There’s so many of them, no one would notice if we were to take one every now and again. I’m not calling for all-out war, just a shifting of ideals back to our roots. One can live on animals alone, but the product lacks in superiority when compared.”

She doesn’t miss his pointed look exactly at her. Her ice-blue eyes meet his and hold the glare. 

“The blood trials begin at the new moon. You will bring one human to the conclave meeting and perform the sacred ritual of blood. Whether you turn them or drain them is up to you,” he tells the surrounding members of the coven. 

“Fuck,” Tissaia mutters and pulls her black jacket tighter around the pale skin of her neck. She’d rather bury a stake in her heart than have to do this. 

But she must. 

**—Day 1—**

Three nights out from the new moon, she’s looking at the specimen she’s managed to snatch from a bar one late and rainy night. It was pathetically easy. Even though the girl is a good bit taller and weighs more, she’d been three sheets to the wind and Tissaia frowns, remembering. 

Stupid fucking Brotherhood. Now she’s picking up drunk humans and she has absolutely no idea how to go about this. 

Flicking her wrist and hand against the girl’s face, she tries to wake her up even though she’s got her restrained and shackled. That little tidbit doesn’t sit well with her either but if she’s to get the Brotherhood off of her back, this is a must. 

“Hey, you. Wake up,” she commands. 

Violet eyes flutter open and Tissaia takes a surprised step back. Her raven hair falls in her face a little bit and stupidly, Tissaia pushes it back behind her ear. Simply put, this human is beautiful. 

“Where am I?” she asks, lethargy in her voice from disuse.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tissaia waves off. The girl jerks on her restraints. 

“This says fucking otherwise,” she sneers. 

“Are you, I don’t know, hungry or something?” Tissaia tries to ignore the venom. 

“Are you going to put on a cute little apron and whip me something up in the kitchen?” the woman laughs haughtily and Tissaia tries to keep her cool. “Or is this some weird sex game?” She pulls on her cuffs a bit and looks Tissaia up and down. “I do have some mommy issues I’m sure you could whip out of me.”

Tissaia brings a solid hit across her cheek and sends her to the land of stars. It’s mean, it’s brutal, but she wants her to shut up.

**—Day 2—**

“That’s some KO punch you have there,” Yennefer mutters and runs a hand along the bruise on her cheek. “Interesting you can pack that much of a wallop from your being vertically challenged and all.”

Tissaia has learned her name. Well, she made a point of discovering who would have the audacity to have such a mouth on them. She’d raked through the small clutch that the woman had carried, finding her ID and various cards. 

“I’m not a domme,” Tissaia murmurs. 

“What?” 

“I said, I’m not a domme. Something far worse actually.”

“Oh yeah? What could that _possibly_ be?” Yennefer challenges. 

“I’m a vampire,” Tissaia tells her and it sounds stupid coming out of her mouth, to admit out loud. While she’d tried to say it with a hard edge and a warning tone, Yennefer’s face blooms into a smile and she lays over grasping at her sides laughing. “It’s not that funny.”

“But it is. So what is it that you, all five feet two inches of you, are going to do with me?”

“You’re my blood sacrifice to my coven,” Tissaia says without any inflection in her voice at all and Yennefer sobers completely. 

“Well, okay then.” She looks around the room and then glances over at Tissaia again. “So, I don’t guess I could convince you to do the sex slave thing instead?” 

Tissaia gets up and walks out, leaving Yennefer screaming and rattling her chains behind her.

**—Day 3—**

“I take back everything I said,” Yennefer says when Tissaia walks back into the room where she’s kept the woman since she nabbed her from the bar. “You’re such a badass. A tiny, almost elvish badass, but a badass nonetheless!” Her eyes go wide when Tissaia looks at her severely. “Seriously, how have you managed to take down humans all along?”

“I haven’t,” Tissaia begrudgingly admits. “But times have changed and I want the…” she stops and rolls her shoulders a bit at what she’s about to say. “Ability to function both with a sense of solitude and autonomy if I need it. I’m to prove that I have the gumption to kill a human. Or turn you.”

“Ohh, would I be your new vampire ward? Would you have to watch after me and command me to do your bidding?”

“You’re taking this entirely too lackadaisical,” Tissaia rolls her eyes. 

“Because I’ve been captured by the most enchanting...creature and I’m finding it really hard to be scared when I’d rather have you ravage me in a different way.”

“Are you seriously flirting with me right now?” Tissaia leans forward in her chair and stares at Yennefer. 

“I don’t know,” Yennefer shrugs. A hopeful smile works its way into her face. “Is it working? Oh my god, I bet you are a sex expert if you’ve been around a long time. I know you’re a pro!” 

“Well, you haven’t got that wrong,” Tissaia agrees with a smile and leaves the room for the day. 

— **The Blood Sacrifice—**

The new moon approaches far too quickly for Tissaia’s liking. She runs her hands over her face, rubbing the tiredness out. Yennefer eyes her with something resembling amusement. She rattles her chains. 

“So, tonight, hmm?” Yennefer nods as if trying to get used to the idea of dying. Or being a vampire. Tissaia hasn’t decided yet, so it’s not as if Yennefer could have come to terms with whatever will occur. 

“Yes,” Tissaia says far too meekly for a soul who is supposed to be formidable. But she’s not had to do this, so this is new ground she’s traversing. 

“Does it hurt?” 

Tissaia glances up from picking at her nails. She fixes Yennefer with a look. Yennefer clarifies. 

“The dying. Or turning. Whatever it is you’ve decided to do to me.”

“At first, there’s a burn,” Tissaia admits. “From the venom in our fangs. But then…” she trails off, pondering. Searching for the right words. “But then everything goes numb. Next, it becomes like floating for a while without really understanding that you’re becoming submerged. Last, there is darkness.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes,” Tissaia shrugs. “The process is neither precise nor the same for everyone. It just depends on variables completely out of my control.”

“So who turned you?” Yennefer asks, tucking her legs beneath her like a child apt to listen to a story. She’s still in her shackles but in a good mood, considering. “How did you become the way you are?”

This is not a story Tissaia wants to tell. Especially not one she wants to relive. Her path to the vampiric world was a heartbreaking one. One she’s had to come to terms with for hundreds of years.

Despite that, she finds herself drawn to the idea of kinship with this woman in front of her. So often has she lived life alone, not developed any rapport with humans or otherwise. Even though she’s been tasked with something that riles her to her core, she feels drawn to Yennefer. 

“I trusted her. More than I should, obviously.” 

Tissaia sighs and motions to her pale skin, flicks a gesture to her icy eyes. She doesn’t like to think about how Yennefer’s will turn to this color too. She doesn’t like to think about her dying either. She doesn’t understand why. 

“A woman then,” Yennefer nods. 

“One that I thought I loved. One that my heart wanted to be near, to rest against. But I was used for her own plans. She groomed me to fall for her and then stole my life from me,” Tissaia confesses. She toes at a buckle on her black boots. “I’ve often wondered what it would have been like if she granted me the mercy of dying instead of becoming like this.” She looks around the basement where Yennefer has been for half a week. She feels incredibly guilty. 

Yennefer rises to her knees and shuffles to Tissaia’s perch on the stool. There’s too much in those amethyst orbs. Tissaia fidgets, unnerved. 

“It’s okay,” Yennefer soothes with a hand to her knee. 

A mirthless laugh escapes Tissaia. “You offer me platitudes when it is I robbing you of your choice? You’re incredibly foolish to not be afraid.”

“Something about you just doesn’t incite fear in me,” Yennefer shrugs. She looks up again, leans a little too close for comfort. “In fact, I’m finding what I feel in your presence is anything but.” 

If Tissaia let her, they would be kissing. But this is not something either of them needs, she finds the chains on Yennefer’s wrists and stills her by holding them tightly. 

“Let’s go,” Tissaia demands. It sounds hollow as she says it.

//—//

There are three ahead of her before it’s her turn. The process is humiliating, but Tissaia goes through the motions. The eyes of the Brotherhood watch intently. Vilgefortz smiles like the weasel he is. 

Tissaia latches the shackles and chains to the board where all sacrifices are done. Where three other bodies have been bled dry, not one of them turned. She supposes it’s about making a statement. Or either Vilgefortz had met previously with the others to ensure there were no new coven members. 

Tissaia locks the chains into place and looks up into Yennefer’s still unafraid face. Her courage and brashness in general make Tissaia’s chest ache. 

She gathers the scissors, cuts the clothing from Yennefer’s body. The woman looks down with a cocked eyebrow. 

“You failed to mention I would be nude for this,” she says down to where Tissaia parts the split fabric of her top. 

“Because it’s fucking ridiculous, that’s why,” she manages to get out before she’s looking at Yennefer’s beautiful breasts. 

She’d say she’s human so she swallows at the sight, but she’s only alive so that is what can be blamed for her visceral reaction. Even why her eyes trace down to the dusky patch between Yennefer’s legs as her jeans fall away too. “Dear gods…”

Tissaia ducks her head. It doesn’t help. Yennefer still smirks. To Tissaia’s horror though, she addresses the Brotherhood. 

“I assure you, I make a much more striking figure currently than I will as a corpse. You lot have grossly overestimated your ability to strike fear in the human populous.” She even manages to roll her eyes. 

“Shut up, Yennefer,” Tissaia hisses. 

“It seems you’re on a first name basis with your mouthy sacrifice,” Vilgefortz looks amused for half a second before his eyes go dark. 

“I…”

“You’ll drain her, Ms. de Vries. Just like the others,” he commands. 

Not that she didn’t see this coming, but she wasn’t exactly ready for it either. She feels the rage begin to bubble again, a chaotic emotion deep down that she’s having trouble trying to control. She looks up to Yennefer again. 

“Do you trust me?” she asks, barely audible. 

“Not particularly, no…”

“Can you though?” Tissaia shoots back through gritted teeth and unmoving lips. 

The bored look Yennefer gives her has Tissaia becoming even madder. She grabs a chair (as if there weren’t enough low points to this) and lets Yennefer have half a second to register what’s going to happen before she sinks her teeth in. 

Her eyes roll back in her head and she sees stars at the first taste of human blood that she’s had in centuries. Of her first taste of Yennefer. She works her lips against the flesh of her skin, feels the metallic-y sweet tang of the women coating her lips and tongue, the warm thickness sliding down her throat. 

She’s losing grasp on what she’s planned to do, an eroticism to having her lips on Yennefer’s nude body. Her hand flails against Yennefer trying to scrabble for a grip but accidentally brushes across her full breast.

Tissaia would apologize. She’d say sorry if Yennefer didn’t taste so amazing. And Yennefer, to her credit, is being wildly acquiescing. So much so that Tissaia struggles to pull back long enough for Yennefer to turn. 

She lays her cheek against Yennefer’s bloody neck, peers past the skylight to see the complete darkness of the sky. Faint twinkles are barely visible. 

“Do it now, Tissaia!” Vilgefortz screams from behind her, pounding on a wooden table near where he stands. She hears the murmured agreement of the rest of the Brotherhood. 

Yennefer has gone stock still. Her lids have closed and her mouth hangs agape. Tissaia sees the goosebumps peppering her body, the way the chill of the room peaks the nipples on her pert chest. A possessiveness she cannot begin to fathom overtakes her completely. 

With one last latch onto Yennefer’s neck, Tissaia does the exact opposite of what she’s been told. She turns Yennefer. 

She can feel the exact moment it happens too, the way Yennefer’s body goes rigid, and then her eyes pop open again. Tissaia gasps at them, unlike anything she’s ever seen. Her irises are still purple but now a ring of blue surrounds them too. 

They move to Tissaia, holding her look for the briefest of moments. In the hanging seconds, Tissaia unlocks the shackles and then nods to Yennefer. 

At the speed of light, Tissaia spins from off of the chair and slides to bury the blade from inside her jacket up through Vilgefortz’s chin to pierce his brain. 

There are screams and cries all around as she watches the life drain from his eyes. “I belong to no man. Nor will I take orders from one ever again.”

She feels rather than sees Yennefer behind her. Once his body drops to the floor with a thud, she eyes the rest of the faces she’s been bossed around by for far too long. It all ends now. 

“A new dawn is coming,” Tissaia glares at all of them. “If you ever kill another human on this entire island, I will rain hell upon you all and Thanedd will never know what hit it. We’ve lived in the shadows, been shunned by humanity because of their fear of us. No longer. We are a part of their world.”

Beside her, Yennefer grabs her hand. Tissaia suddenly feels like she can take on the world. 


End file.
